


Black Virtue

by theweakestthing



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hannibal is basically still Hannibal minus the murder and cannibalism, Hannibal loves to rile Will up and watch him go, M/M, Struggling Artist Will Graham, Will's a combative mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:06:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22589872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theweakestthing/pseuds/theweakestthing
Summary: Will is a starving and struggling artist living in New York, Hannibal is a wealthy psychiatrist who takes interest in Will's work and becomes his benefactor.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 96
Kudos: 253





	1. Prologue

Will tilted the space heater a little more toward him, leaning out of his seat as he reached for it. The November chill pervaded throughout the apartment. It made Will’s teeth chatter, but worse, it made his fingers numb and his hands jittery. As he dropped back into his seat, he rested his palate and brush on his thigh, Will rubbed his hands together and held them out toward the space heater. He was already wearing a sweater and a jacket, but only gloves would protect his hands. You could paint with gloves on but Will definitely preferred not to.

He swallowed thickly, took up the palate and brush from his thigh again. Before he continued with his work, Will pushed his glasses up his nose with the back of his thumb. With one deliberate swipe across the photograph, Will went back to his work.

Back in Baltimore, Will had taken up his grandfather’s old camera and shot the docks. Lonely and in disrepair, the absence suggested something about the area that wasn’t too hard to figure out if you knew even the slightest thing about Baltimore. His grandfather had taken photographs of the house he’d built for Will’s grandmother out in the deep wilds of Minnesota. Will had the whole collection of them, his only inheritance. They were 6x4 black and white prints. Will never used those in his work, he only ever painted over his own photographs.

Rain was patting rhythmically against his thin windowpane. Rattling like Will often did himself on uncertain nights, nights where Will felt like a small sail boat untethered, aimlessly floating in the tumultuous sea.

Will was not suited for social media, but he did the absolute bare minimum to be able to get by on commissions. The piece he was currently working on was for a luxury café on the Upper East Side. A place that he could never afford to patron himself, and had only visited to discuss the commission and to see where his work would fit in.

He wasn’t suited for social interaction either. The moment he’d looked at his client he had seen that bullet proof glass that stood between them, the distance she kept from everyone around her, the way she bound herself inside her own body. It was hard to see and Will had done his best not to look. He’d kept his eyes on his notebook, looked around the café pretending the survey the space.

It was difficult not to think of her as he was working. Instead, he tried to think of the space, the faux but expensive vintage atmosphere, clinging onto a time that you had never lived through, a place you couldn’t have nostalgia for. A faux inherited nostalgia.

Certain times were heralded for their greatness and people accepted that without thinking much of what that meant, and felt their own nostalgia for missing out. Will knew better than that though. There was no point in time that was perfectly wonderful for everyone, time wasn’t something that you could arbitrarily ascribe value to, there were far too many variables involved.

Will finished up the piece just before lunch time. He left it to dry, switching off the space heater, and made his way over to the kitchenette. Hands raised above his head. Will stretched, bones cracking as he reached toward the ceiling, rolling his shoulder.

The air in the apartment was cold. Autumn had claimed New York and was blooming into winter, crisp tingling air was slowly turning to biting chill. Will had spent his whole life on the coast. He had followed after his father from ship yard to dock to wherever there were boats. Every boat eventually needed repairs. It was a reliable job.

He had never lived inland, he’d never been much of a distance away from the sea in his entire life. The ocean was his only reliable companion. Even when he’d left his father and gone off to college, the sea was right beside him. Always reminding him that it was there with the taste of salt in the air, picked up on the breeze, watering his mouth as the wind assaulted him. His one and only friend.

If only he’d been allowed to have a dog, as he’d dreamt about every moment of his childhood, a friend that didn’t have to go away and would love him unconditionally. A friend who would show him affection, reflect something other than his own face. They had been far too poor to have a pet though. His father had often joked that they’d been too poor to even have a goldfish, couldn’t waste the water he’d say. It had left Will terribly lonely. Something he’d grown into, like a hand-me-down, a well worn sweater.

Even now, as an adult free to do what he pleased and spend his money on whatever he wanted to, he still couldn’t afford a pet. He couldn’t afford to live in a place where they allowed pets. Even if he could afford a pet, he was pretty sure that his neighbours would rat him out, they seemed to hate him instantly. Maybe he wasn’t neighbourly enough or something like that. Either way, Will knew that a lot of things would have to change before he was in a position to own a dog.

For now, he would have to settle for the continued comfort of the ocean. It was a lonely, cloying comfort. It was the kind of comfort that reminded you that you’re alone and separate from others. It reminded Will of the chasm between him and everyone else.

Will found his fridge sparse and holding mostly condiments, at least there was something to put on the half a loaf of bread he had left. Will often forgot to go grocery shopping, he also often forgot to eat, another hold over from his childhood of penny scraping and empty cupboards. His father had sometimes forgotten to get him anything to eat, coming home drunk after a night at some working men’s bar. It was cheaper not to eat and Will had never exactly been flush. It had taken a long time for him to get anywhere near financial stability and even then that stability was precarious and mostly relied on Will’s lean experiences.

As he chewed on a peanut-butter and jam sandwich, Will stared out of his steamed window and watched the street below. As per usual, there wasn’t much going on at one thirty in the afternoon. At least there wasn’t anything distracting him from going to back to his work.


	2. Chapter One

The light was purposefully dim, in an effort to create an air of intimacy around every table. Will tried to smother the feeling of being judged by every gleaming object in the café. He had never touched anything as expensive as the contents of this establishment, every moment that ticked by made Will feel as though someone was about to come and tell him to leave, that he wasn’t good enough for this place, maybe they would even accuse him of stealing. The sorts of people that owned these places would never be so impolite, but Will wished they would be sometimes. Blunt faced hostility was something he could handle. These intricate dances of faux manners and rules of interaction made his head spin.

Will hung the painting himself, that way he could get more money out of his client whilst making it seem like they were getting a better deal. It also meant that he was in control of every aspect until he relinquished ownership of his work. At least he’d know it was hung right, even if everything else around it might change.

“Hmm, nostalgic but in a vaguely resentful way, as though the yearning is unwanted,” a man’s voice came from behind him, a European accent that made Will think of sad wind chaffed faces and empty stomachs. 

Will shifted the frame slightly and the man behind him tutted, he ignored it and stepped away from the wall to get a better gauge on its alignment. But before Will could so much as recognise that the frame wasn’t straight, the man behind him stepped forward and adjusted it himself, clapping his hands together as he stepped back beside Will with a nod.

“Much better,” the man said, smiling something sharp and self satisfied, the politeness was practiced and the falsity was barely there but Will managed to catch it. “Are you the artist?” He asked, finally turning to face Will fully.

The man was wearing a three piece suit, stylish but a little flamboyant. His face was lightly weathered and his hair was greying but in a tasteful way that made him look distinguished, like a man that had lived a long and interesting life. It was a shame that Will wasn't interested enough find out.

“I am,” Will said tersely, pushing his glasses up his nose with the edge of his knuckle.

“It suits this establishment,” the man said. Will had a strong feeling that the man was making a distinction between the work, the café and Will himself. One of these things is not like the other. Will had always known that he didn’t fit in, he didn’t need some haughty stranger to tell him that.

“I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a compliment or an insult,” Will said mildly, lazily holding back to the slight contempt he felt for the man.

“It’s a compliment,” the man said as he turned his attention back to Will.

“Are your compliments always so difficult to unravel?” Will asked. He allowed his confusion and distaste to show on his face, let the man see his discomfort, confront it even.

“I’m Doctor Hannibal Lecter,” the man said, holding his hand out for Will to take. There was something in the way it was held out, rigid and rough and in stark contrast to the placid look on his face, it said that this was an offer not to be refused.

“Will Graham,” he replied, taking the hand, he gave it a firm shake. There didn’t seem to be much of a point in rejecting the proffered hand or pushing the previous subject matter. The so called doctor certainly appeared to have very little interest in answering Will’s question or continuing that particular line of conversation.

“This is your first time in this establishment, I take it?” Hannibal asked, head tilted slightly to the side like an inquisitive dog. Although, Will felt that there was something a little more predatory about it.

“Second, though the first was nothing more than a scouting mission of sorts,” Will returned, trying his hand at the colourful and obtuse phrasing Dr. Lecter had been using throughout their short conversation.

“You’ve not partaken in the delights of its offerings I suppose,” Hannibal asked with a knowing gaze. Not so subtly using even more colourful language than before.

“No, I don’t have the bank account for that,” Will replied, knowing that it was obvious and that Hannibal was simply asking for politeness shake or just to see how Will would reply. His own smile was terse as he watched Hannibal’s smile curl wide enough to show his teeth.

“Then I would be delighted to have you join me for a spot of lunch,” Hannibal said without preamble.

Will stood there for a moment, simply blinking back at the man. He could not for the life of him even begin to fathom what about him and their short interaction had inspired such a request. Request was maybe too light of a word. It was something more of a polite demand, the tenor assumed Will’s answer before he’d even had the chance to come up with it.

“Like I said, I neither have the palate or the bank account for this place,” Will said, rejecting the offer in as firm yet polite a way as he could manage when he felt like a wild animal cornered.

“It would be rude to invite someone to lunch without intending to pay for it,” Hannibal said with a restrained kind of cordiality that spoke of a distinct displeasure, the sound of it almost made Will balk.

Will couldn’t think of a rebuttal that wasn’t wholly rude, he wasn’t sure why he didn’t want to be rude to Hannibal, but there was something about the man that made Will wary of impoliteness. As though it would be uncouth, which was something Will hadn't cared for much before. He wasn’t particularly known for his consideration. And yet he found himself reaching to be considerate, but a resentful kind of consideration, a consideration given with gritted teeth.

“I suppose I don’t have any reason to refuse then,” Will said tightly. What would be the harm, he thought.

Hannibal stared back at Will, blinking slowly at him, but before Hannibal could open his mouth the owner came over and interrupted. What followed was a short and perfunctory conversation with the owner, during which she showered Will’s work with praise, talking to him as though he had recently suffered a brain injury or was the type of person her ilk often raised money for at social events to appear philanthropic. The whole exchange set Will’s teeth on edge but he’d long since learned not to bite the hand that feeds. It was shame though, he’d have loved to sink his teeth into her, especially if this was how she spoke to everyone of lesser means than herself. Once she was done with him she turned to Hannibal with the smile of a genial host, greeted him with the candour of an old friend and left them.

Will couldn’t help but notice the way that Hannibal softly frowned as he watched the owner greet some patrons and seated them herself, obviously she knew them by name.

“Shall we?” Hannibal said, all signs of displeasure gone from his face, as he gestured toward a nearby table. There was a ‘reserved’ sign sitting delicately atop the tablecloth.

They made their way over to the table. And much to Will’s relief, Hannibal did not pull his chair out for him, he was allowed to seat himself. Quickly, almost without Will seeing him, a waiter came over and removed the reserved sign, holding it behind his back, out of sight. He waited patiently as Hannibal delicately plucked up the menu and scanned his eyes across its elegant script. Will had barely got his hands on the pressed card before Hannibal had ordered for the both of them, and slipped the menu out of Will’s hand with the swift deft of a magician.

“Are you a regular here?” Will asked, internally cringing from the knowledge that they both knew he had practically just asked ‘do you come here often’. It was painfully obvious that Will was out of practice in simply being around other people. Hannibal had the good taste to only barely smirk and answered as though Will had asked a real question.

“I have a taste for the finer things,” Hannibal said, he avoided embarrassing Will by not looking at him as he spoke, adjusting the napkin on his lap. Only when he was done did he look back up at Will.

Will did not miss the predatory way that Hannibal’s eyes drank him in, he suppressed a shiver as he watched the waiter set down their drinks. Hannibal had some sort of tea, something herbal if the colour was any indicator. It seemed to Will like something an older woman who believed in the divination of the zodiac to guide her through life might drink, not someone as distinguished as Hannibal, but Will wasn’t entirely up on the drinking trends of the wealthy elite so what did he know.

Will’s drink was definitely some kind of coffee. There was something about the sharp little smile Will caught as Hannibal brought the china up to his lips, that look told him that Hannibal wasn’t going to tell him what it was until he’d tasted it. He supposed that there were worse things in life than drinking something without knowing what it was. Although, the good doctor hadn’t asked if he was allergic to anything, which Will considered an unnecessary thought.

As though he were simply at home drinking Dunkin’ Donuts coffee from a Styrofoam cup, Will sat back in his seat and drank some of the coffee. It was obviously some kind of latte. Maybe with vanilla extract and a sweet syrup, and a hint of cinnamon but he was entirely sure of that, Will had never really put too much stock in his own palate. He liked it well enough, but it might have been a little too sweet for his taste.

Instead of telling Will what his drink actually was, or inquiring on his tastes and how he liked the drink, Hannibal picked up a completely different topic.

“I don’t suppose you bought the cologne that you’re wearing yourself,” Hannibal said, making Will’s head spin.

“Heh, I keep getting it for Christmas,” Will muttered, tilting his head as his cup clinked sharply against the saucer, “it would hardly be polite to refuse it,” he added, feeling that this would be something someone like Hannibal would agree with.

Hannibal sipped at his tea and nodded softly before setting his cup back down.

“And yet you still wear it,” he said curtly, almost sneering as he tilted his head away.

“I don’t have anything else and I’d rather not smell of store bought deodorant,” Will stated blandly but honestly.

“Heavens forbid,” Hannibal said, the corners of his lips twitching as he ducked his head to lift the cup back up to his lips.

“Are you mocking me Doctor Lecter?” Will asked, full of faux innocence.

“Of course not,” Hannibal replied, a reflection of Will’s pretend naivety. 

Will didn’t have the time to form a reply, as at the exact moment he opened his mouth the waiter set down two plates of something that Will couldn’t name from staring at it alone. There wasn’t much on the plate. Will had expected that, gourmet to him always meant less food. There was something kind of funny and also horrific about the way wealthy people chose to eat so little. A funhouse twisted version of the past where withered and tanned peasants were forced to watch portly elite land owners eat their fill. He did his best not to sneer at the plate.

Hannibal nodded his thanks to the waiter and uttered a polite negative when they asked if there was anything more they could do. Then he began to eat, almost completely ignoring Will’s existence. Again, it was obvious that Hannibal was unwilling to tell Will what the meal was without being asked. Will, himself, was unwilling to ask.

He sunk his fork into something that looked an awful lot like salmon and asked Hannibal an entirely different question.

“So, what sort of doctor are you?”

“I’m a psychiatrist,” Hannibal answered, holding his fork away from his lips as he looked up and across the table at Will, “though I used to be a surgeon,” he added, Will did not miss the faux modesty, though he was sure that many did.

Will nodded as he chewed, it made sense, the man had been highly analytical and precise since he’d introduced himself.

“What made you change?” He asked, it seemed like the most interesting part since the disciplines were, at least at face value, quite different from an outside perspective. Will couldn’t think of a single thing about the two disciplines that was similar.

“Hmm?”

“From a surgeon to a psychiatrist,” Will clarified, though he was sure that the clarification was not needed. Maybe the doctor just wanted to hear him talk or he just wanted to make him uncomfortable. Will did not get the feeling that Hannibal was doing it to assert his superiority over Will, unlike others of his ilk. There was just something about this whole situation that was delightfully combative, even if Will was loath to admit it.

“I’m more interested in the decisions people make rather than the outcomes,” Hannibal said vaguely, casting his eyes across the room as though he saw patients everywhere, Will knew bullshit when he smelled it.

“That’s a vacuous answer,” Will said, setting down his fork after asserting to himself that it was salmon he was eating. “I’d go so far as to call it a non-answer,” he added tersely.

The corners of Hannibal’s lips twitched, Will was beginning to understand that getting a genuine smile or a genuine answer from the doctor would be quite the challenge. He was thoroughly irritated by his desire to rise to that challenge.

“I simply find the work more rewarding,” Hannibal replied, almost smiling as he watched Will’s reaction.

The rest of the meal went by in much the same manner. Will asked questions and got vague and broad answers, Hannibal asked questions and Will answered as honestly as he felt like and as sharply as would show his frustration with the other but not enough to seem rude. The food was good though, even if Will never got to find out what it was, and the conversation was thrilling. There was something combative and challenging about the way Hannibal conducted a conversation. Will was under no illusions about who was leading their interaction. He’d long ago given up on enjoying talking to anyone, Hannibal had come along and crashed straight through that assumption.

Once the meal was over, they bid each other good bye. Hannibal said almost exactly what Will had expected him to say.

“It was a delight to meet you Will,” Hannibal said with a small cordial smile as he pushed in his chair.

“Likewise,” Will said without much feeling, he wasn’t entirely sure whether he meant it or not. Mostly, Will was relieved that Hannibal didn’t hand him a business card or ask to exchange contact details. He didn’t know how to politely decline anything in the face of Hannibal’s wry knowing expression, he also didn’t know why he was so desperate to be polite to the other. There was just something about the challenge in Hannibal’s eyes that wouldn’t let Will back down.

And with that blissfully short exchange, they parted ways.

Will quickly resigned himself to the fact that he would likely never see the doctor again. New York was a big city and the chances of bumping into someone twice, especially when the chasm of class was stretched out between them, were slim at best. He wasn’t entirely sure whether he wanted to bump into Hannibal again anyway. Maybe, maybe not, maybe Will was just lonely and too prideful to admit it. He sighed to himself as he stepped into the subway. Keeping an eye out for cops or any signs that there was one waiting around the corner, Will jumped the turnstile as casually as he could and walked down to the platform like he was meant to be there and took the train home.


	3. Chapter Two

He worked through the rest of the day, until the sun began to kiss the horizon. The light dimmed and Will didn’t like to work under the changed dynamic a light bulb. He looked out through the window, noting that the rain had stopped as lights came on in the apartment buildings across from his own and fluorescents buzzed to life in the storefronts down below. It was probably time for dinner, which meant left over mediocre pasta from the day before.

Eventually Will found his way to bed. He dropped face down onto his bare mattress and stripped of as many clothes as was safe for the time of year, which was only his sweater, he was already wearing sweat pants. He pulled the comforter up and over his body. For all the good it did Will might as well have slept in front of his microwave. It was better than nothing.

His phone buzzed against the bare wood floor, making an awful racket, like a tiny jackhammer. Will groaned as he reached for it, pulling the phone free from its charger. He squinted at the sudden brightness as he brought the screen to his face. Forcing himself through the mild but irritating pain, Will saw that he had a new e-mail.

For most people, setting up notifications for every e-mail you got might be a short lived nuisance, but for Will it was a necessity for his job. Though he usually didn’t expect e-mails after eleven pm. Will considered simply just setting the phone down and going back to sleep, or more aptly going back to attempting to sleep. He didn’t though, instead he opened his phone and went into his e-mails.

Will was the kind of guy that never deleted an e-mail unless his inbox was full, although he did keep separate folders for all of his invoices and business information, he wasn’t entirely uncivilised. The state of his inbox would definitely irritate Hannibal, Will thought and instantly recoiled at the thought. Both things irritated him. Will decided to ignore all of that and opened the new message.

It was completely different from the standard fair Will got for his commissions. The e-mail was full of flowery prose praising Will’s work, using words that Will hadn’t seen written down since college. Will was an entire paragraph in before he realised who the e-mail was from and it was only because Hannibal mentioned their chance meeting. Hannibal likened it to a fateful meeting, Will rolled his eyes. It wasn’t the usual pick-up line but Will had heard something similar many times. To Will’s mild surprise, the e-mail did not end in a request for a second meeting with the promise of something more but ended in an actual request for a commission if he could spare the time. There weren’t any details about what the commission would be, instead there was a request to meet some time in the next week outside the damn MoMA of all places. It almost seemed like he was trying to impress Will. Somehow though, Will got the feeling that the doctor was being completely sincere.

If it were anyone else, if it was someone he hadn’t met, Will would have instantly declined. He would have thought that they were trying to get into his pants, not that it was completely off the table with Hannibal but the older man’s intentions or would be attraction was almost impossible to discern. And as such, Will could not discern the reasoning behind meeting him outside the art museum.

Will was tired and he was getting colder and colder the longer he kept his hands out of the sheets. He usually tried his best to sleep straight through these biting nights, it was too painful to stay up and face the temptation to turn on the heater. His mind was fuzzy with the cloying pull toward the promised land of sleep. Later, Will would blame these things when he wondered why he’d agreed to the meeting then and there instead of simply waiting until the morning to reply with a clear head and coffee sliding down his throat.

He set the phone back down and curled up under the sheets, trying to keep the warmth inside, and quickly fell into a blissfully dreamless slumber.

* * *

His phone vibrated again, this time it didn’t stop and continued to rattle against the bare floorboards. Setting an alarm in the frigid space between autumn and winter was imperative, otherwise Will would never leave the safety of his bed sheets. He absolutely dreaded what real winter would bring. Deep in the heart of November it was impossible to imagine what February would be like. With a familiar groan, Will slapped his hand around the icy floorboards in search of the offending cell phone.

Eight am was the compromise between his father’s enforced five am kicks out of bed from his childhood and the noon casual roll out of bed of his college days. Eight am was a promise that Will had made to himself to stave off the feelings of laziness and uselessness, a promise to do his best to be like any other human being.

Will switched off the alarm and clambered out of bed. He pushed his glasses up his face and pulled on a sweatshirt. He padded out of the bedroom to relieve himself before wandering into the kitchen to refill his body with coffee. The sky was a steel grey, but it didn’t loom with the promise of rain. Will was thankful for that considering that it was grocery day. He opened the fridge and rifled through the cupboards in search of something to eat for breakfast, there was nothing besides some mouldy bread, half a jar of peanut butter, two slices of ham and ¾ full bag of dried pasta. Will ate the ham and had a spoonful of peanut butter, then he threw out the bread.

It wasn’t until he went over to his laptop that Will remembered the e-mail from the night before. He dropped down onto his threadbare couch, overwhelmed by the realisation. Will adjusted his glasses upon his face. Frowning as he booted up the laptop, he wondered why exactly he had agreed to the commission and meeting Hannibal again. Their initial meeting hadn’t been unpleasant, but then again Will would be stretched to call it enjoyable. Sure the tug of war that was their conversation was interesting and thrilling, but it felt more like sport than companionship, maybe Hannibal had been sizing him up the entire time. It sure as hell felt like it.

Waiting as his four year old laptop struggled to fully come to life, it was practically ancient in technological terms, Will thought that maybe if he really took Hannibal’s commission then he could get enough money out of the good doctor to replace it. Depending on the sort of commission Hannibal wanted, Will might be able to pay for more than just the bare necessities. Even though the doctor probably wasn’t as well endowed as a café on the Upper East Side, he was still a higher class of customer than Will’s usual clientele. Once he was able to, Will checked his bank balance before checking his e-mails.

He looked over the e-mail from Hannibal again. There wasn’t anything sinister about it, it seemed genuine enough and at least the suggested meeting place was public, there didn’t seem any harm in at least meeting Hannibal and hearing him out. If the job was real and worth Will’s time then fine, if not then Will could just walk around the museum and count the day as a loss. And from the sight of his bank account Will couldn’t afford to reject the doctor outright before giving it real consideration. Will wrote down the details of the proposed meet up on the back of a receipt, showered and left for the grocery store for a splurge, at least it was for someone in Will’s financial standing.


	4. Chapter Three

Will thought that he knew that Hannibal would arrive fashionably late, knew that the older man would want to push his boundaries. Rich people usually left you waiting around for them because they have such a large sense of self importance and entitlement. Will’s time never meant anything to them. This was different. He could tell from the smug little smile Hannibal wore as he approached Will. It told him that each and every one of his actions and reactions were found very amusing by the doctor. The knowledge made Will’s hackles raise, he tried his best not to grit his teeth when his greeting left his lips.

“So,” Will began, “you’ve come incredibly empty handed,” he added and made a show off dragging his eyes down to Hannibal’s aforementioned empty hands. It wasn’t too uncommon, but Will always suggested that his clients bring material with them or send it to him for reference and just general information on what they wanted. Without it Will was left blind in the abyss.

“Yes,” Hannibal said, even though he wasn’t smiling Will could hear it in his voice.

“Usually when I get a commission, the client gives me references or at least a description of what they want,” Will said, barely holding back his irritation as he stared hard at Hannibal.

“I thought it would be better to show you the kind of painting I’d like from you rather than to describe it, of course I could have printed something to hand you for reference but there’s nothing quite like seeing the thing in the flesh,” Hannibal said, flicking his eyes around before he tilted his head as he looked back at Will. It was as though he expected Will to instantly agree with him, as though Will’s question was inane and pointless.

Will wouldn’t admit it, but he agreed with Hannibal on one thing at least, there was something about seeing a work of art in the flesh instead of on a screen or printed in a book. It was hard to define but you’d know it if you had experienced it yourself.

“I suppose that makes sense,” Will said in a way that he hoped conveyed something along the lines of ‘this better be worth my time’.

“I’m glad you agree,” Hannibal said, as though he’d read Will’s thoughts and come out with what he knew would irritate Will the most. Will did his best to look impassively at the older man, he checked his watch but that motion too seemed to leave no mark upon Hannibal. “An artist without an eye for such things would be less than useless, I often wonder what they teach at art schools these days,” he mused as he went on, trying to draw an opinion from Will.

He certainly didn’t agree with that. Although, Will’s mind did glide over the thoughts of what they had taught him at art school, less than someone like Hannibal would hope but more in areas that weren’t remotely connected to art history or the craft at all. The important things they taught you at art school were never historical or technical. No, the importance was pressed upon networking and making friends so you could use them in the future to further your career, obviously they didn’t put it that way but that was the true lesson. It was a lesson Will had taken on board but in practice had failed spectacularly and miserably at. He’d learned the hard and painful way how to navigate social occasions.

Will didn’t reply, he simply waited for the doctor to lead the way.

They stared at each other for some moments, seemingly at an impasse, until Hannibal smiled cordially and led the way into the museum. Will followed, trying not to fall into step beside the other. He’d once read something about mirroring and it seemed exactly like the sort of thing that Hannibal would take to mean that he’d won the conversation. Whatever that meant. Will dragged his fingers roughly through his hair, he hated the way that Hannibal could instantly ignite emotions Will usually had to pretend to have. It was like having to use muscles that he hadn’t used in years. Muscles that had atrophied and withered from disuse, it left him stumbling through their interactions. At least his actual muscles worked well enough to get him inside the museum while he tried not to worry too much about his straining wit.

Will practically knew the museum of modern art inside out. It didn’t usually help though because whenever they moved things around for a new exhibition or showing it threw him off completely, as though someone had come into his home put up new walls and moved all the furniture. He would find himself turning into walls that weren’t there two weeks ago or finding doors locked that weren’t before, permanent pieces moving around and to be found in different rooms entirely.

“They have an exhibition I’ve been looking forward to for some months now. I was wondering if you would be able to create something inspired by it,” Hannibal explained, finally deigning that Will was allowed to know something about the commission he was supposed to be doing. Will didn’t miss how Hannibal had said nothing further. He didn’t say whose work was featured in the exhibition or even what the theme was if it wasn’t a retrospective from a singular artist.

“Well, I would have to see it first,” Will replied blandly as they walked through the reception, striding toward the front desk.

“Of course,” Hannibal said, as though it went without saying. It left Will bristling. Hannibal ignored him, left him to bristle, as he brought their tickets for the exhibition. He used his member’s card because of course he had a member’s card. The only thing remotely close to a member’s card or loyalty card Will had ever owned was one of those cards where they stamped it until you got a free coffee at his local café in college.

Suddenly Will was reminded starkly of the gulf between them, not that he wasn’t always constantly aware of the differences between himself and the impossibly wealthy, but just the sight of Hannibal’s member’s card brought it to the forefront of his mind. Although, it wasn’t so obvious in the museum. Museums had a way of levelling out people’s differences.

There were various groups of school children, college students, tourists, and locals all of varying ages and class backgrounds. In a place like this neither of them stood out and Will liked it that way.

A fresh faced girl, probably a student herself, manned the door. She tore their tickets with a breezy smile and hoped they had a good day. Hannibal smiled sardonically, as though she’d told a mildly amusing joke, as they passed her and moved through the doorway.

* * *

The room was sterile, as was usual with a white cube gallery, but the work was anything but. The walls were lined with paintings and photographs that looked to Will like open wounds. Bandages, gauze, blood and viscera. There was something sickly about the entire exhibit, Will felt as though he was coming down with something just looking at it. He could almost feel their pain tearing through him.

“Trauma and the self,” Hannibal said, stopping besides Will.

“Huh?” Will murmured, frowning as he looking at Hannibal.

“They want to show you how destructive it is to forget your past. They wanted to force everyone to remember the horrors that have been committed,” Hannibal explained cryptically, making nothing clearer.

“No one ever really forgets trauma,” Will said, eyes on a canvas with one large blood red stroke down its right side. Hannibal didn’t speak until Will’s eyes returned to him.

“Oh, but they do try, they pave over and bury what was once there,” Hannibal said, almost smiling as he spoke, there was something whimsical to his voice, “this group is called the Viennese Actionists, they carried their trauma from the second world war like a burden upon their backs and laid it out at the feet of their audience at a time where people wanted nothing more than to move on,” he continued, delving into a real explanation. Will had a feeling that Hannibal wanted his undivided attention before he really got to the meat of his explanation. As though he needed an audience, _are you watching closely?_

Although, Will could not imagine Hannibal as a magician.

“People always want to move on, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?” Will asked, mostly humouring Hannibal with the question. He was painfully aware, of course, of how far they were off topic but Will was beginning to realise that Hannibal preferred to play games rather than have real conversations.

“Move on, yes, forget, not so much,” said Hannibal.

Will looked hard at Hannibal as the other looked back at him. He could tell that Hannibal was picking away at the outer shell of his person, finger nails trying to dig under his skin, looking for some trauma to leak out.

“Like I said, no one ever really forgets trauma,” Will said, defiant as he stared flatly back at Hannibal.

“I suppose they don’t, even if they can’t recall the memories, the echoes show themselves in the person’s actions and thoughts,” Hannibal said, smiling at Will before he turned his attention back to the work on the walls.

Something caught Will’s attention on the far wall. It caught his attention because it didn’t seem to fit, one of these things was not like the other, and it stood out like a sore thumb. There was a set of large print photographs hung on the wall. They were black and white where the other works took on a quality of rot, rust and decay. There was something sterile about them, designed and staged perfectly for the desired outcome, there was a false veneer smeared over them that Will found attractive. He got the feeling that the artist was using the distance they created to protect themselves.

Will walked over to the prints and examined them closer. Beyond the way that the details and implications made his stomach churn, Will appreciated the aesthetic. There was a particular quality to the grain in black and white prints or photographs from before the advent of digital printing that he enjoyed greatly.

“Rudolf Schwarzkogler,” announced Hannibal, stopping beside Will again, “more of a puppeteer than an active participant like the rest of the collective, they were hardly collected though, more of a scattered group of people with similar ideas,” he continued, “these are stills from his short films, he made very few in his short lifetime.”

Will was quickly learning that the way Hannibal explained things subtly guided you to the conclusion that Hannibal’s opinion was the right opinion. He didn’t necessarily disagree, he didn’t know enough to disagree, but there was something of a firm hand about the man. As though disagreeing wasn’t quite rude but certainly unpleasant.

“Are they all like this?” Will asked, dragging his eyes over the twisted form before him.

“Yes, staged with a model, agony and yearning, it’s no wonder that he committed suicide,” Hannibal stated, eyes full of pity for someone he'd never met, and not the nice kind of pity either.

“Suicide?” Will said, face scrunched up quizzically, turning his head to look at Hannibal.

“He jumped out of his apartment window,” said Hannibal mildly, as though he were reporting the weather. It didn’t seem to be of much consequence to him.

Agony and yearning. Will wasn’t the suicidal type, but he certainly understood those feelings, felt them all the time. A constant static that crackled in the background, burst under his skin. Trauma was an open wound and Will saw the way it was desperately being bandaged over in the work before him. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. There was something about the way the figure reached out, twisted and distorted, that spoke of the pain of yearning for something and the fear of receiving it. Will new plenty about that particular feeling.

“It’s fitting that you would be drawn to this work,” Hannibal noted with little outward intrigue.

“How so?” Will asked, holding back the easy resentment and offense.

“Unwanted yearning,” Hannibal said simply, pointing back to their first meeting.

Will saw it and didn’t see it. It wasn’t something he intentionally put into his work, but there was no way to wipe away the autobiographical touch from it. Every artist left their fingerprints behind, whether they wanted to or not, they all left pieces of themselves in the work. There was no avoiding it and that left Will feeling a little vulnerable. Mr. Cellophane, see-through to a certain degree.

“What do you yearn for Will?” Hannibal asked after leaving Will to stew in the aftermath of that statement, eyes alight with intrigue. 

“Lunch,” said Will, unsubtly asking for Hannibal to ask him to lunch.

* * *

Will wasn’t surprised when Hannibal said that he knew somewhere nearby, he also wasn’t too surprised when Hannibal brought two books on the subject of the Viennese Actionists. The books were heavy, the coffee table kind, but luckily Will had brought his messenger bag with him. Although, walking down the street with them hanging off of his shoulder took some effort, he did his best to not let the strain show as he followed Hannibal.

This establishment wasn’t as extravagant as the café where they had met, which made Will only slightly more comfortable. The Ritz was less extravagant than that café.

“So, have you come to a decision on my proposal?” Hannibal asked once their coffee had been set down before them. Without preamble or unneeded and certainly unwanted pleasantries, frankly Will preferred it that way. At least the doctor didn’t seem to be one for small talk.

“I’ll take on the commission, but it’ll take a while if you want me to really learn about this group and make something truly inspired by their work, but what I want to know is what happens if I’m just not inspired?” Will asked, tapping his fingers against his coffee mug, angling them just so that his nails hit the ceramic but not every time. He counted the minute twitch in the doctor’s eye as a success and tried not to feel too smug about it.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Hannibal said with clear certainty, as though he simply expect Will to pull an entire painting out of his ass in the next few minutes. The conviction and certainty was nice while also managing to be completely baffling. 

Will had definitely winged it before when he had no idea what his client really wanted, but Hannibal was obviously more savvy than someone who’d seen his work on social media and wanted to hang it over their dining table or couch or put it in some storage facility somewhere and wait until he died and became a big success discovered by his landlord and make a mean profit off of his death or something. It was something Will had thought about extensively. Although, he was pretty sure that posthumous notoriety was becoming rarer than it once was, and even then it had been mighty rare.

“I’m sure I will,” Will returned just as their waiter returned with their lunch. 


	5. Chapter Four

Once Will was home, he flicked through the glossy pages of one of the books that Hannibal had brought. Most of the pictures were in black and white, but the ones that weren’t jumped out and grabbed for Will’s throat, the Viennese Actionists had definitely thrown subtly out the window. Will knew that that was the point. Their work was more like a brick thrown through a window than the feather light touches of meaning that Will was more used to. Knowing with certainty what a piece of work wanted from you was something Will preferred to skirt around. He didn’t like being told what to think.

He knew the Viennese Actionists weren’t trying to tell him what to think, but they sure as hell wanted him to think about something and something specific. Will preferred works that were just vague enough to show snippets of the artist’s intention but allowed you to come to your own conclusions.

With his laptop balanced upon his knees and the two books splayed open on the couch beside him, Will looked up articles and flicked through images and made notes for reference.

He had agreed to take Hannibal’s commission. In a way, it was more like he was on retainer. Hannibal had agreed to pay him weekly for his work if Will would meet up with him once a week to check in, to make sure that everything was moving along and progress was being made. Will didn’t mind the ‘checking in’ and the money was more than worth sitting through a meal with the man, even if it was a veiled attempt to see exactly where his money was going.

Will’s eyes were practically glazed over after the first hour or so. If Hannibal thought he was going get something just as obvious in its meaning and message as the works on display in front of him, then he had another thing coming to him. Will would never be so inspired to paint his message in the capital block letters that the Viennese Actionists used. He supposed that since Hannibal had seen his stuff, then he knew that.

Even with the pompous veneer of haughty elitism, Will could spy the sharp cutting intelligence that others would gloss over in Hannibal. Of course intelligence was taken as a given for an ex-surgeon come psychiatrist, but there was something more, a worldliness that came with experience and age. It was the kind of intelligence that came from experiences that Will was wary of putting upon Hannibal, but he felt confident in his assumptions all the same.

Through all of his contact with Hannibal, the short time they had spent together, Will was almost certain that he was giving Will carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wanted with this piece. Well, at least that was what he had discerned from the doctor’s smoke and mirrors way of speaking. The man was exhausting, and yet so thrilling to be around. Not quite a contradiction but certainly something Will would have thought he’d find repulsive and yet somehow found himself drawn to.

Will put those thoughts to bed and refocused on his work.

Rust poured down the screen as a heavily bearded man with a cane watched naked men and women rove around a field in filth. This was more fetish than violent art made to force you to confront yourself. Will rolled his eyes and closed the video. There was a little part of Will that wondered if Hannibal might be messing with him, it was probably true considering what little he knew of the man, but Will needed the commission.

Over the next week, Will researched the group, together and individually. He collected reference materials. Images that caught him and excerpts that spoke to him, splaying the materials he felt would inspire him across his floor.

By the time it came around to his meeting with Hannibal, Will didn’t really have anything to show despite a deeper understanding of the Viennese Actionists and their relatively short lived movement. Besides Rudolf, the rest of the artists involved appeared to live long and prolific lives, which meant Will had a lot of research to do. The only thing he had to show Hannibal was knowledge and opinion. He took those things with him.

* * *

They met in a café that was much closer to Will’s income bracket than either of the places they had met before. It was made exceedingly obvious by the juxtaposition of Hannibal’s person to the establishment; it took a lot of effort for Will to smother his amusement at the sight. Pristine Dr. Hannibal Lecter next to peeling wallpaper and tired waitresses. 

“Never thought I’d see you slumming it with us plebeians,” Will said by way of hello, as he approached the table.

“Culture and good food are not known to care much for the class structure,” Hannibal said and sipped at his coffee as though he was making a point.

“Of course,” Will replied while thinking to himself that he much preferred the culture that all could partake in, but that was probably his class status talking, he added cynically and for his own amusement.

Will took his seat opposite Hannibal, noticing that the other had ordered for him yet again. There was a slightly less sweet coffee and some kind of croissant sat on the table. Will would have complained about the now constant over stepping of boundaries in the food and beverage area, but Will had never turned down a free meal. He’d rather have the choice taken from him if it meant that he never had to open his wallet around the doctor.

“How are you finding our Viennese friends?” Hannibal asked, watching Will with the intrigue and intelligence of an eagle perched high in a tree above him.

“’Friends’ is a very strong way to put it,” Will said and took a bite out of the croissant, causing flakes of pastry to spatter his shirt and the table.

“They aren’t very good at engendering an audience to their cause or their art itself,” Hannibal said, seeming as amused as ever by Will’s reaction. It should have been getting on his nerves, but Will found himself preferring the challenge of wit and wills to benign conversation.

“I don’t know about that, the scholars seem to adore them,” he said, rolling his eyes as he took another bite, subduing a smile at the slight widening of Hannibal’s eyes as he continued to eat messily.

“But the random man on the street knows nothing of them, and if you introduced them to the Actionists they wouldn’t have many positive things to say and they surely would not think of their work as art,” Hannibal said, his eyes glossed over the crumbs and flakes of pastry that littered the table and speckled Will’s flannel shirt.

“No he wouldn’t, you’re right, but the regular man on the street would likely think the same about a Rothko,” Will replied, he set what little was left of the croissant back onto the plate.

“Yes, that is an unfortunate by product of intellectual illiteracy,” Hannibal said, as though the thought alone caused him great displeasure to think.

“Is it really important for everyone to be intellectually literate though?” Will asked. He didn’t come from a household that knew the names of artists or had anything hanging on the walls. His father cared very little for art. Art infected everyone’s lives, through entertainment and advertising, and yet most people held it with very little regard. They had bigger things to deal with.

“Now we’ve come to essentialist philosophising and I am quite out of my depth,” Hannibal said with a wry smile.

“No more than I am,” replied Will, taking a sip of his coffee.

“We’ve gone wildly off topic,” Hannibal said, smiling democratically at Will, as though the younger man’s previous statement was taken as a given. “How is the commission going?” He asked, sidestepping the whole conversation.

“I have a few ideas,” Will said, picking at the croissant again. 

“Inspired by distaste?” Hannibal asked, lips quirking as he watched Will from across the table.

“Not quite,” Will replied, he didn’t want to give Hannibal the satisfaction of believing that he found nothing redeemable in the Actionists’ work mostly because it wasn’t true but also because he so desperately wanted to prove the man wrong in any way he could. “There’s something there, just under the surface that connects,” he added, tilting his head and pressing his hands against his face the same way that he’d seen Andy Warhol do in an interview.

Hannibal probably hated Warhol. Although, Will wasn’t the biggest fan either, he hated how everything seemed to be a joke, mockery or a parody of life. Will personally liked to be some level of honest. Though he did appreciate Warhol’s movies and his darker paintings, and there was something about elevating the mundane to art that Will enjoyed. In a way, Will wanted to bring art down to world of the mundane.

If Hannibal noticed what Will was doing he made no comment about it.

“And what might that be?” Hannibal asked, dabbing the corner of his mouth with a napkin, positioning himself opposite to Will. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

“It’s illusive, but I’m sure I’ll grasp it eventually,” Will replied, he was trying on the affect of the avant garde kids he had met in college. They were the kind that liked to conceptualise and philosophise over creating something. Will always said what he meant and that was something of an anti-thesis to those sorts of people.

Hannibal smiled.

They spent the rest of the afternoon talking about other things. The recent death of a young starlet that was splattered across the newspaper neatly folded over Hannibal’s lap, the inclement weather, the way in which Will preferred his coffee, the quality of the pastries at the café they were in, the pedigree of a poodle that came in with a customer, the street traffic, and the state of the subway. A wide flurry of topics that whizzed by until Will looked out the window and realised that it was getting dark.

“Time appears to have slipped away from us,” Hannibal said, watching Will stare out the window.

The time really had slipped away from him, as though he’d knocked a glass of water over and the water had spilled all over the table, time dripped onto the floor. Strangely their conversations had been just as combative as it had been before and still Will had been so wrapped up in it that he hadn’t realised the time. It didn’t really matter. Will had nothing better to do and as he would often mention, he’d never turn down a free meal.

There was just something about the man’s aloofness, his malleability, his ability to be whatever the moment required that Will enjoyed as an emotional conduit. He wasn’t so completely on the surface like most people. He wasn’t a book completely read in one look. Will was having fun figuring out who Hannibal really was, seeing the small chinks in the veneer of the other man’s polite mask, peaking under the porcelain to find Hannibal peaking back.

“Time is a slippery bastard,” Will murmured, watching as Hannibal readied himself to leave, pushed back from the table and buttoning up his blazer.

Hannibal smiled at him as he rose.

“Yes, it is forever falling between our fingers, and so rarely are we able to grasp it,” he said as he pulled his coat on.

He looked at Will as though there was something heavy in his statement that Will should take heed of instead of the same lame platitude simply dressed up in fancy clothes. Now Will knew that Hannibal was trying to get a rise out of him. His expression was an obvious invitation for a reply, waiting eagerly for Will’s reaction.

“You can’t grasp something that doesn’t even really exist,” Will said, rising himself, he brushed the crumbs off of his clothes as he gracelessly as he could.

“You’re not a fan of figures of speech?” Hannibal asked, brow raised as he stepped around the table, stopping just behind Will to gesture for the other man to leave ahead of him. “Aren’t works of art simply figures of speech?”

“Such a wordsmith Dr. Lecter, maybe you should take up poetry,” Will said it as though he meant it, but his smile belied his true intentions and Hannibal smiled back. He slipped his jacket on and made for the door with the doctor trailing behind him.

“I would have thought that one might be hard pressed to find an artist who wouldn’t reach for sentimentality,” Hannibal said, “yet here you are,” he added, his sharp smile could be heard in his voice.

“Maybe before 1914, and mostly among those who could support themselves or had people that supported them,” Will said with a shrug, he pulled the door open and walked through it before Hannibal. He certainly wasn’t the kind that would wax poetic about art, its great meaning and cultural impact, how important it all is. As far as Will was concerned, your relationship with art was as personal as your relationship with religion. It wasn’t anyone else’s business. He was never going to proclaim how important art is, sure he understood and even admired its effect upon the world and the people in it, but he wasn’t going to dictate the meaning of that. And of course, he just wasn’t the poetic kind.

“Perhaps, but maybe you lack the romanticism to appreciate it,” Hannibal replied, his breath was ethereal in the night around them. He stared at Will with that same wry smile that Will was getting well acquainted with. 

“I don’t know about that,” Will said as he shoved his hands into his pockets and left for the subway with a short nod in the doctor’s direction.


	6. Chapter Five

Will stepped out of his apartment and into the corridor. The building was drab and depressing. It was a place that those who could leave and sleep in better homes would often romanticise as though all culture existed in those decaying corridors. As far as Will was concerned the cockroaches had more culture than those sorts of people.

From Will’s perspective, the building was a cry for help that no one heard or they simply chose not to hear. It was an invisible decomposition happening in public, right before everyone’s eyes, if anyone cared to see. That reminded Will of something that was perhaps a little too on the nose to be wholly worthwhile. Even Will wasn’t immune to not wanting to be obvious, he didn’t want to be too easily read, he didn’t want people to think they knew everything about him or his work.

He needed to get outside and see the city. See the lives that everyone else ignored, see the things that others didn’t see but knew were there. Of course he wasn’t going to take photos of random strangers. These days you had to get permission and such, especially if you or the person you sold it to was likely to sell the piece in the future. Of course it wasn’t usually the case that the subjects of your work came baying for your wallet, but this was New York City, the disadvantaged (putting it lightly) part of the city, and people were more likely to seek out compensation if they thought they were being swindled or smelt the green in the air. Luckily for Will, people never smelt money around him, but he always got permission if he ever took photos of people. It never hurt to cover your back.

Walking around his neighbourhood with his camera in his jacket pocket, there was no way he was going to carry it around like a tourist. He wasn’t one to tempt fate. His eyes scanned the streets for the after effects of forgotten and ignored life.

He looked up to the sky and saw a pair of shoes hanging from the phone lines. It was a familiar image. No matter where you were in America, what state and what city, you could always find a pair of shoes swinging from the phone lines. Will pulled his camera from his pocket and pointed it skyward. It wasn’t exactly perfect, but it was a start.

There was a shopping cart left haphazardly up against a dumpster in an alley. The sight of it invoked images of the homeless, some of the most invisible people in the world. The dim autumn light gave the sight a strange melancholy. Will took a few photos of that too.

A damp mitten left on the sidewalk. Flowers dumped in the trash with the card still attached, it read ‘get well soon’. A cot half smashed to pieces in a pile of garbage against the corner of a building. A deflated balloon tangled in the gnarled branches of a tree. After an hour of walking around his neighbourhood and taking photos of forgotten trash, Will decided to go home and get something to eat.

All in all, it didn’t really amount to much and what he had to show felt a little saccharin or maudlin. A step in the right direction perhaps, but Will didn’t think that he’d stepped all that far, but still it was something.

He stepped back inside his building feeling unsatisfied.

* * *

It was a bad day. Will was on his way to see Hannibal, it was their third meeting and Will still had nothing to show for his work despite having worked so hard that the soles of his shoes were worn through. It started raining the moment he stepped out of the subway, hard and fast. The shock of it rocked through Will’s senses. As though things couldn’t get any worse, it also happened to be the anniversary of his father’s death.

He was soaked through before he got to the restaurant. It was one of the more classy places that Hannibal had met him in, and there was no way that they were going to let him in dripping onto the carpet. He entered the building anyways. He at least he wanted to let Hannibal know that he’d tried to arrive, even if he caused a scene. He was in the mood to cause a scene anyway.

As soon as he entered the restaurant the host turned toward him, shock spilled over his face, obviously about to demand that he leave the premises. Will paid him no mind. Instead he looked about the room for Hannibal’s telltale statuesque way of sitting, as though the man were another work of art that Will had spent some time pondering over.

It seemed that Hannibal had seen him first. The tall figure of the doctor strode over to him, completely ignoring the host’s spluttered attempts to say a single thing to Will.

“The weather seems have to caught you off guard,” Hannibal said. If Will didn’t know better, he would have said that the doctor rushed to his side.

“Like a bully waiting for me outside school,” Will murmured, blinking back at the blurry image of Hannibal through his rain smeared glasses.

Hannibal smiled and turned to the host, easily assuaging the man’s fretful muttering, assuring the man that they would be leaving shortly. The host did not seem able to say much of anything to Hannibal and simply nodded back at him. Of course Hannibal was a known and frequent patron of the place. Will was pretty sure that there wasn’t a high class and cultured establishment in the whole city that didn’t know Hannibal by name.

Will was hardly listening. There were so many eyes upon him, especially after Hannibal had risen to meet him, the notion that they knew each other was probably scandalous to the regular patrons.

Hannibal guided him back out onto the street. He pulled out an umbrella as though it were a weapon and he a skilled assassin, Will stepped under the cover of the fabric, listening as the rain patted against it. It didn’t make much difference to his current state.

“What now?” Will muttered, finally meeting the other man’s gaze, watching Hannibal’s marble face set in an expression of vague concern.

“May I suggest that we reconvene our meeting at my home, unless you’re uncomfortable with the thought of being on uneven ground?” Hannibal said, staring down at Will impassively.

“I’d rather go home if it’s all the same to you,” Will returned, struggling with the desire to shove his hands into his sodden pockets.

“Then may I extend an offer to drive you home?”

Will thought about going back down into the subway, riding the train home with the rest of the unwashed masses. He was pretty sure that if Hannibal did kill him and dump his body in the Hudson then the doctor would be the first and only suspect. It would be stupid and entirely beneath Hannibal. If Hannibal was going to kill him, Will imagined that it would be with far more finesse.

Will shook himself from those strange and dark thoughts, and worked up a reply.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” Will murmured, “as long as you’re fine with me dripping all over your car?”

“I would not have offered otherwise,” Hannibal replied wryly.

Will nodded curtly, he was beginning to feel dull, as though his skin was thrumming with abrasions. Rubbed raw by the events of the day.

He followed Hannibal to his car. It was sleek and black, exactly the sort of car he expected someone of Hannibal’s status to own. Will wasn’t surprised either when Hannibal held the passenger side door open for him. He rubbed his hands together as he waited for Hannibal to climb into the driver’s seat. His teeth were beginning to chatter by the time Hannibal strapped on his seatbelt. The doctor switched on the heater as he settled into the car. Will held his hands against the warmth with a thankful sigh.

Will reluctantly gave Hannibal his address and watched as the doctor deftly punched it into the satnav.

“It seems that you’ve had a particularly miserable day Will,” Hannibal said as he pulled the car out into the road.

“I should have told you I couldn’t come,” Will replied, watching the water run down the passenger side window.

“I assume it wasn’t simply the sudden rain that caused this,” Hannibal said, assuming correctly without removing his eyes from the road.

Will thought about lying to him, about simply not saying anything in reply, it would be rude and entirely not in the way that Will had been playing at with Hannibal in all their previous interactions. It would be a kind of rudeness that would endear concern.

“It’s the anniversary of my father’s death,” Will stated flatly, eyes still on the downpour outside.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment, the only sounds were the continued patter of the rain and the swishing of the windscreen wipers.

“Were you close?” Hannibal asked inanely.

Will shook his head. He’d never felt close to anyone, least of all his father. Even though he had never met his mother, he felt closer to her by simply fantasising about who she might have been and how she might have loved him. He felt closer to her than he could ever feel toward his father who had actually been there.

“Childhood was something cold and hard, like a block of ice,” Will murmured, sinking into his stony feelings.

“And you carved yourself out of that ice,” Hannibal replied, philosophising and dramatising Will’s entire life. “Once the ice thawed, you stepped out,” he added as though he were speaking of some great historical or mythic figure rather than Will himself.

“Fully formed?” Will said, brow raised sceptically.

“Hardly,” Hannibal returned.

“I don’t think that anyone is truly ever ‘formed’,” Will said, the quotation was implied in the tone of his voice.

“The whole universe is in a constant state of flux, ever changing and ever evolving,” Hannibal said. “The Will I met last week is not the Will I have met today.”

“And yet I feel like you’ve never changed,” Will returned, “carved from marble,” he added, staring at the way Hannibal’s hands were perfectly placed around the steering wheel.

“Are you calling me a statue or a work of art?” Hannibal asked, that infuriatingly charming smirk dancing on his lips.

“I’m not sure,” Will replied, gnawing on the inside of his mouth, “both maybe,” he added with shrug that he regretted. The movement made his wet and cold clothes slide over his body. It made him shiver.

“What about the rest of your family?”

“I don’t have any,” Will replied automatically.

“An orphan?” Hannibal asked, one brow quirked as his eyes quickly slid to Will before they returned to the road. “Something we have in common.”

“Oh,” Will muttered, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, he had only just realised that they were currently having a conversation about their personal lives, “I’m not sure that I’m an orphan.”

Hannibal didn’t say anything but it was clear in the style of the silence that he was waiting for Will to continue.

“My mom walked out when I was very young and never came back,” Will stated, as though he felt nothing about it. In all honesty, Will had never thought too greatly on what he felt about barely having a mother, about her never being around for all of the important things in his life. A psychiatrist would have to pry that out of him, with the deftness of a surgeon who moonlights as a magician. The irony of who he was sat with was not lost on him but it didn’t mean that he was going to suddenly feel the need to open up to Hannibal. “What about you, no family?” Will asked, turning to conversation back, tit for tat.

“None,” Hannibal stated simply. “My sister was murdered when I was just a boy, my mother killed herself shortly after and my father died in a car accident a year later. I spent a few years in an orphanage in Lithuania before my uncle found me, he had a stroke while I was at medical school and I became that only living member of my family,” he explained as though he were talking about distant history and not people he knew and had intimate relationships with. Another thing they tangentially had in common.

A strange kind of amicable silence fell over them, as though this airing of personal information had let out some of the also strange tension that had been creeping skyward between them since they had met.

“You have arrived at your destination,” the satnav droned, cutting straight through the silence Will had only just settled into.

“Pull up wherever, you probably don’t want to hang around if you know what I mean,” Will muttered, not that it really would matter if Hannibal did hang around considering the continued downpour, then again Hannibal would have no reason to stick around for longer than was necessary.

Hannibal gave a curt nod and looked around for somewhere to pull over.

“Please feel free to cancel any of our meetings in the future,” Hannibal said, watching Will unbuckle the seatbelt as he smiled warmly at him, all Will could think about was Hannibal with his clients giving them the same smile.

“Yeah,” Will said and opened the car door, the rain grew louder and the cold crept in. “I’ll see you,” he added before he climbed out of the car and back into the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while eh? Well you guys know that ~things~ have been going on. Anyways, I'm hoping to update more frequently.


	7. Chapter Six

Will hadn’t made much progress since the last time he’d seen Hannibal. When he got the photos back from his little trip around the neighbourhood, it took all of his effort not to throw them straight into the trash. They were all wrong. It was only seeing them on the paper, in black and white, that told him this wasn’t what he’d been reaching for. They were all too impersonal, too distant, too removed, too something that Will usually didn’t mind being. They were completely removed from the human element, but mostly they were removed from himself.

The Viennese Actionists were personal, achingly personal to explain something that was almost universal. A shared trauma, a shared guilt, viewed through one window. He’d been foolish to believe that he could create the same thing without taking a piece of himself and holding it up for others to see. He had tried to cut corners simply because he didn’t want to face himself.

Will would have to find something that was personal to him, but also universal. He ground his teeth. Nothing came to mind, mostly because Will wouldn’t let it. He wasn’t the open type, wasn’t the type to let others in on what was going on in his head, definitely wasn’t the type to willingly put it on canvas. On top of that he didn’t know how to relate to others, but he related to them too much.

He kept the photos. They were necessary to show where he had started, to show him the wrong answer.

“How would you define yourself Will?” Hannibal asked, pulling Will straight out of his thoughts and into the present.

“Hmm?” Will hummed and raised a questioning brow.

“When, decades from now, an art historian writes a biography on you, how will they describe you?” Hannibal clarified, hiding his smirk behind the rim of the dazzling china cup.

Will could just imagine it. One of those thin books that flopped about, stood in a uniform archive along with similar books on Francis Bacon and David Hockney. It would have a picture of one of his most famous, but not the most famous, pieces on the front.

The biography would be short and read something like: ‘Will Graham was a desperately lonely man who liked to be alone, many described his appearance as wind chaffed and bookish. He was raised by his father alone, who dragged him from dock to dock. While his father fixed boat engines Will took photos with a hand-me-down camera. His works speak of desire and nostalgia for a time never lived.’

“Dull,” Will said, knife scraping against his plate, “the biography would be dull,” he added and took a bite of his omelette.

“Because you believe that you yourself are ‘dull’?” Hannibal returned with a quirk of his brow, a small spark of intrigue in his eye.

“I don’t think that I’m any more interesting than anyone else,” Will stated. Whether or not that was entirely true was nebulous, Will changed his mind about it every hour.

“So everyone is dull?” Hannibal said with a smirk.

“It’s not about dullness,” Will said, setting the cutlery down with a clink against the china, the sound made his teeth itch. “Regular people make for a boring study and the outcome will be dull.”

“You’re far from regular Will,” Hannibal said, accent making the words heavier.

The way he said Will’s name made it sound like a term of endearment. Will was beginning to get the feeling that maybe Hannibal was flirting with him, or he just felt closer to Will now that they had shared their lack of family with each other.

“My ego doesn’t need stroking Hannibal,” Will returned, sneering slightly, using Hannibal’s given name in spite.

“I’m not trying to stroke you,” Hannibal said, it was purposeful but Will got the feeling that Hannibal would have played it off as an accident of a foreign tongue if pressed on the matter. “No, I am simply stating a fact, a fact I saw the moment I met you,” he went on, eyes heavy on Will’s, as though this was possibly the most important thing that Hannibal had ever said to him.

“You met my painting first,” Will said and instantly wished that he hadn’t. It was almost prideful, almost showed the ego he’d just told Hannibal wasn’t there, it was a kind of grinning confidence that he had desperately tried to smother in his younger days.

Hannibal didn’t so much as try to hide the smile that spread across his lips as he stared back at Will. A moment passed between them.

“There’s not a thing that is ordinary about you Will,” Hannibal said.

Will felt certain in his assessment that Hannibal was flirting with him.

“I would say the same thing about you doctor,” Will returned, “I’ve never come across anyone like you,” he added.

He was flirting back and he wouldn’t be able to tell you why.

* * *

If Will was going to reveal something about himself, if he was going to be intimate with complete strangers, then Will thought that the best place to start was with a self portrait.

The first thing he did was what everyone else does. He pulled out his phone, took it into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror and took a photo of himself without thinking too much about it. Checking the picture, Will found himself not quite looking up at his reflection. Will didn’t like looking into the mirror. He didn’t like what he saw in the reflection, not the image, but what he saw in his eyes or sometimes what he didn’t see.

Will examined the amateur selfie with his critical artist’s eye. He wasn’t looking at the mirror in the picture, like he knew he wouldn’t be, instead he was looking down at the phone. The circles under his eyes were more prominent under the stark bathroom lighting, it contrasted with his skin and made him look pallid and sickly.

There was something about the way phone cameras hadn’t stopped jumping in quality that made the whole thing seem false. It wasn’t a part of Will’s nostalgia, not that he had ever taken photos himself in his youth. Still Will wanted to capture something of the tacky photos of his childhood.

His grandfather had died when he was ten. They had been close and it was the first time that Will had truly felt loss, he hadn’t recovered, no one ever really does. He had lived with his grandfather for months at a time when his father was on the other side of the country elbows deep in a boat engine or at the bottom of a bottle. The death of his grandfather changed his life. It meant that he spent more time with his father, which meant that he spent more time alone. He’d have been lying if he said he didn’t believe that it had an effect on him.

He hadn’t just inherited his grandfather’s camera, he’d also been given his briefcase full of photographs, only later in his life would Will realise how smart his grandfather had been in giving him a practically worthless inheritance. His father had spent his monetary inheritance almost solely on cigarettes and alcohol.

What Will wanted was the same feeling he’d got when he had first opened that brief case and held the photographs of people he didn’t know and would never meet. The date and time stamped onto the bottom left of the picture. He wanted to look at a picture of himself and see someone lost in time, see a relic of a time almost forgotten.

Will practically fled his apartment in a rush to get to the drugstore. His fingers clumsily slid over the disposable cameras, he brought seven, which happened to be all that was on the shelf. The girl at the counter smacking gum raised a singular brow but said nothing as she scanned them through.

He wouldn’t use them just yet. He needed time to learn how to really take pictures of himself, sure the disposable ones had timers, but he wouldn’t be able to tell a damn thing about his composition until the photos were processed.

Ideally, Will would have used one of his own photos from his childhood, something with a date stamp from the early ninties. There weren’t any photos from his childhood, well not any that he was willing to part with. He kept those deep in the briefcase. They were the only thing that he had left to show his connection to his grandfather. Will wasn’t really the sentimental type, but he had carried that briefcase with him wherever he went, no matter how much his father bitched about it.

If he couldn’t, wouldn’t, use any of the pictures he had then perhaps he could recreate or at least capture the essence of them.

He pulled the briefcase from its place on the shelf in his cupboard. The leather was worn, most especially around the hinges where Will had opened and closed it many times, the clasps didn’t work anymore and Will had taken to tying it closed with string. Gently, with the tips of his fingers, Will pulled out the small stack of photos that were of him alone.

A small boy with wild dark curls smiled toothily up at the camera, he couldn’t have been more than four years old. Will didn’t remember this photo being taken. Still he remembered the way his grandfather would smile back at him; Will resisted the urge to trace his fingers over the picture.

After a few minutes of flicking through the photos and pausing every now and then, Will found what he was looking for. It was hard to tell how old he was since he wasn’t facing the camera, but he couldn’t have been younger than six since he had gotten the sneakers he was wearing on his sixth birthday. He was sat in his grandfather’s kitchen. Young Will was sat upon the rickety wooden chair beside the breakfast table. It was raining, the raindrops frozen in time trailing down the windowpane behind him, never to reach their destination. Will was looking out through the window, at the downpour outside. The only light was what was coming in through the window, which meant that Will was cast in darkness, as though he wasn’t the subject of the image but whatever was out in the rain was.

It was disjointed, disconnected bust still discernibly him, it was perfect. 

With the tripod set up in front of the window, Will stared through the viewfinder and shifted around to get the right framing. It wasn’t raining, but it was the season for it. If he left the tripod where it was, he was sure to catch a significant downfall sooner or later.

* * *

“How are we coming along?”

Will had almost forgot that he was working for Hannibal. Their last meeting had been more friendly than business like and Will couldn’t remember if Hannibal had asked about his progress, and it was shockingly bad form that Will hadn’t thought to inform him about it either. His livelihood depended on his attention to detail, which included his attention to his clients.

“I’ve got some ideas,” Will said, gnawing at the cookie that came with his sweet tea. He didn’t want to give away too much since he could always change his mind or the piece itself could change, his works always seemed to take their own form without much input from him, or at least that was how it felt.

“Come now,” Hannibal smirked, “don’t sell yourself short,” he added, wiping his mouth with the napkin before he folded it and set it neatly on his now empty plate.

Despite the lapse, Will did have the forethought to bring something along with him to show for the now month’s worth of work he’d been struggling through. Although he wasn’t sure what someone like Hannibal would make of looking at something on Will’s phone screen. For the first time since he’d gotten a cell phone, Will was self-conscious about how cracked the screen was.

He pulled it out with defiance, opened his photo album (which he’d scrubbed clean the night before, not that there had been anything in there in the first place) and slid the phone across the table. Hannibal arched one solitary brow at Will before he plucked the phone off of the cloth.

At this point in his career, Will had perfected the air of pretending not to be nervous about what his client thought. He never cared much about whether they liked it or not, though the money was a decent motivator, he wasn’t going make something that he didn’t like just because someone was paying him. The way Hannibal’s eyes critically ran over the photos without saying a word didn’t make Will nervous, instead irritation was mounting inside him.

Will knew that he hadn’t shown Hannibal anything particularly impressive, especially for someone who knew their way around a museum and could introduce Will to movements he hadn’t heard of before, but the silence was gnawing. Eventually he slid the phone back toward Will. In his own silence, Will took the phone, closed it and put it back in his pocket.

He took a sip of tea to stop himself from asking what Hannibal thought.

“An impressive start for someone who had never heard of the Actionists before,” Hannibal said, even and smooth, as he picked up his tea cup.

Will bit his tongue and nodded. He didn’t want to play into Hannibal’s game and look like he was looking for the doctor’s approval, there was something in the imperceptible quirk at the corner of his mouth that made Will feel like he was being fucked with.

It was a complicated game, he had to show enough not to disappoint and hold back enough to surprise the client when the final piece was unveiled. A tight rope walk that Will felt that he’d perfected. He’d stared at many confused but not quite disappointed faces only to later show the same client the finished product and watch the delighted shock cross their face.

All he’d shown Hannibal were some mock ups of what he was envisioning over some of the photos he’d taken in his walk through the neighbourhood. The next phase wasn’t ready to be seen and Will hated showing people photos of himself. They either saw too much or too little, read whatever they wanted to see in him.

He didn’t know if he was right, but Will thought that he knew Hannibal was holding back from complimenting him, though the continued patronage spoke louder than whatever came out of Hannibal’s mouth. Will was quickly learning that Hannibal’s actions spoke more for the man than his words. Hannibal was sorely mistaken if he thought Will was going to fawn over the little scraps of attention he was throwing him.

Will wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d last spoken, so lost he was in his thoughts that the world around him dimmed. The tea was warm as it moved through him.

“Are you hiding something from me Will?” Hannibal asked, his voice shot through Will’s mind like an arrow in the night.

“Huh?” Will replied mildly, belying the juvenile feeling of being caught red handed, pulse jumping beneath his skin. He met Hannibal’s eyes, wholly unwilling to back down.

“I’ve seen your work, as much of it as I can in person, and we’ve had these conversations, so I feel like I’ve gotten to know you to a certain extent,” Hannibal went on almost as though Will hadn’t spoken. “Either you’re not living up to my expectations, which I do not believe is true, or you’re holding something back,” he continued returning Will’s steady gaze with his deep dark eyes, “do you have some aces up your sleeve Will?” He finished, mouth quirking into something close to a smirk.

“Maybe,” Will said with a shrug and sat back against his chair, daring Hannibal to ask more questions.

“Of course,” Hannibal said, smiling minutely at Will, opening and closing his eyes like cats do. “There’s a lot more to you than most people see.”

Will simply shrugged and finished off his tea. Really, Will was dying for a diet coke and a cheese burger, and he wanted to be under the greasy florescent lights with unknowable company passing around him. The pompous pretence of the places that Hannibal liked to take him made Will’s skin prickle. There was a thick veneer of fake to everyone there, as though every single person in the establishment was playing a role in some high art play.

Of course there was more to Will than what he showed most people, especially his clients. He usually didn’t entertain people trying to get under his skin. A lot of people had tried to get him to open up, to let them in, to allow himself to be vulnerable. Will flinched away from vulnerability as though he were allergic to it.

And still he leaned toward Hannibal and the man’s obvious desire to peek under Will’s skin. He hadn’t examined it too much. Maybe it was because Hannibal was actually interesting, maybe he delighted in the challenge that Hannibal posed both artistically and as a person. Not to mention the veiled flirting that had been going on between them since they’d met.

“There’s more to everyone than what simply lies on the surface,” Will replied after a long moment of thought. “Although, I’m not really interested in most other people,” he added coyly and finished off his tea, setting it down against the saucer, fighting the twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“Neither am I,” Hannibal said, returning a wry little smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are heating up a little, sorry, I probably should update the tags and add 'slow burn'.  
> Thanks for all the kudos and comments~ ;3


	8. Chapter Seven

Rain beat against the windowpane. It patted out a rhythm, out of time and out of tune, but it was comforting all the same. It was the most excited Will had been to see rain since he was five and had just gotten his first and only pair of rain boots.

The time had come.

Will had spent the last two weeks taking a myriad of pictures of himself at various times of day, sitting in different positions and poses, and adjusting the composition minutely until he was pleased with it. He had even taken a few pictures with the disposables, just to test the timers.

The chair he had set up was very similar to the one in the original photograph. It was a basic wooden chair. There were millions of chairs like this one in kitchens all over the country, people were sitting in them right at the very moment that Will was simply staring down at his own.

Will sat on the chair and arranged himself into the position he’d decided was the one he wanted, just to get the feel of it, to be able to hold the position for longer than usual before he set the timer on the disposable camera.

In the seconds silence, Will stared out the window and thought about what it felt like to be in his grandfather’s kitchen all those years ago. The musk in the air of wet wood and tobacco, the scent of ash, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, orange juice and freshly brewed bitter coffee. It was almost like he was back there. He could almost feel his grandfather stood behind him, shadow nearly touching the frame, the faint smile that was pressed to his lips as he held the camera up to his face.

The shutter went off and Will was back in his own apartment again.

* * *

“I’ve had a breakthrough,” Will said, almost toppling out of his seat the moment he’d dropped into it, though he managed to right himself without much incident. Of course Hannibal noticed, Hannibal noticed everything.

He didn’t mean to make it sound like he’d cured cancer or something as equally groundbreaking, but he was excited and would have preferred to be at home working on the piece without interruption.

The table was full of food and their drinks sat a neat distance from the edge. He still found it irritating and grating that Hannibal ordered before he arrived, without his input. And still he wouldn’t mention it. He’d overlooked it since Hannibal was still paying for the meals. Though Will was getting weary of the pompous pretence of the places that Hannibal took him, really he was fantasising about seeing Hannibal in McDonald’s.

He also felt like he was wasting time. It wasn’t raining, but there were other things he could do with the lightning bolt’s worth of energy thrumming in his veins.

“Your excitement is palpable,” Hannibal said, watching Will with playful intrigue. His fingers were curled delicately around the cutlery, Will instantly saw the table transformed into a gurney, the food a body and the cutlery surgical equipment.

“I’m not excited,” Will replied, he didn’t know why he was denying it.

“You’re smiling,” Hannibal continued, smiling himself, though in that self-satisfied way that made Will feel as though someone had rubbed a balloon against him, as though he were static.

“I am not smiling,” Will said, though he didn’t make any effort to change his expression, that would be telling. That would be losing and Will was determined to never hand Hannibal a victory.

“I hope that we can see each other as something other than patron and artist,” Hannibal said, changing the topic, shifting goal posts.

Will hated that. Hannibal was always changing the rules of the game. He’d figured out that they were playing a game the first time they’d met, but he had never figured out the rules. Only Hannibal knew the rules and he was always changing them.

“Something like what?” Will asked, he was happy to find that the liquorice coloured liquid in the cup before him was coffee. He was frankly sick of tea. Tea was European, or was colonised by Europeans, and Will liked to throw himself in contrast against Hannibal. Hannibal was the most European person that Will had ever met. 

“Friends, companions,” Hannibal said, Will could feel Hannibal’s eyes upon him as he studied the food between them, “people who enjoy each other’s company,” he went on, speaking like they were sat on the street outside of a café in Paris, an artist and a philosopher speaking almost a century ago.

Really they were in a listed building with waiters crawling around them like worker bees, and the worker bees delivered food to all the queen bees at their tables. The tables always looked empty because no one wanted to be seen to be eating too much. Their own table was cluttered.

“I already enjoy your company,” Will said, more stated, as though it was a removed fact that had nothing to do with him.

“And I yours,” Hannibal replied cordially, all attention on Will.

Will wasn’t thinking about running home anymore. The tripod in front of the window wasn’t on his mind. He’d already forgotten the weather forecast. His mind was completely in that room for the first time since he’d arrived.

If Will really thought about it, he wouldn’t have been able to remember the last time he had really enjoyed someone else’s company. Maybe that one girl at one college party he’d been dragged to by his roommate who he’d spoken to for four hours. He’d never seen her again. He was seeing a lot of Hannibal.

* * *

The drugstore lights were just the wrong side of sickly yellow. One of the fluorescents was surely about to go out, Will could hear it thrumming, could see it pulsing low and high. It was giving him a headache. Why there was a line, Will didn’t know, but it probably had something to do with how much he wanted to get his photos. 

Will swiped a bottle of painkillers from a nearby shelf without stepping out of the queue.

Eventually he was able to get up to the counter and retrieve his photographs, and pay for the painkillers. He made his exit the moment the clerk dropped his change into his open palm.

He sighed the instant he got out onto the street. The light was softer, approaching dusk, and the streetlights hadn’t come on yet. His head was still pulsing with the promise of a worse headache to come. He opened the bottle of painkillers and swallowed two dry before he made his way back to his apartment.

Just holding the photographs sent Will straight back to his youth. The feeling of sitting in his closet in Maine, hoping that his dad wouldn’t come home, holding the smiling pictures of strangers. His grandfather had told him about all of them but over time Will was forgetting what he’d said. He would never remember who these people were, which probably didn’t matter, but it still bothered him from time to time.

Will knew the person in these photos.

He spread them all out on the kitchen floor. The light was better in there even without switching the bulb on, and the white floor contrasted easily with the dark photographs. He stared at each of them in turn. He’d have to pick out the best, for the final piece, and only he knew the criteria though he wouldn’t have been able to explain it to anyone else.

After a while he had whittled it down to three options. The rest he would experiment with.

Sat in front of his easel, a cheap five dollar canvas propped against the paint caked wood. Will taped one of the photographs to the canvas with masking tape. Laptop on the coffee table besides him, he scrolled through the mock-ups he’d shown Hannibal and a few new ones he’d made since he’d had his epiphany.

He worked slowly. He stood up to step away every few minutes, thinking over every single brush stroke, nothing was unimportant. Where the paint fell, where it obscured the photograph, the shapes it made on the canvas, it was all important. The books on the actionists were spread out on the floor around him. Will kept flicking his eyes down to them, trying to replicate something, intimate detachment.

The day slid away and Will was left with the satisfying ache of staying in the same position for many hours. He turned from the canvas to find it dark outside his window, the night made the light bad and told Will that it was time to finish, then his stomach told him that it was time for dinner. He rose from the stool and stretched, groaning as his joints popped.

He stared at what he’d managed to do in the hours that had passed. Will found himself smiling, he hadn’t been this satisfied with his work in a long time.

* * *

“You must have some pieces you hate,” Hannibal said, barely asking, as he cut into his English muffin.

“Huh?” Will asked, brows scrunched together as he stared at Hannibal.

They were finally sat somewhere where Will didn’t feel like he was slowly suffocating. It was a simple yet chic café only a couple of blocks from Will’s apartment. Will had even been there before.

What was more surprising was how Hannibal had met him outside, and they had entered together, and Will was allowed to order for himself. It was a sign of something. Definitely not another game, otherwise Hannibal would have said something, made some sort of comment that prodded at Will’s skin. But Hannibal hadn’t said a damn thing. So no, it wasn’t a game.

Maybe Will had been rewarded for his continued suffering. In reality, Will figured that Hannibal had simply decided that Will had proved himself worthy enough to order his own meals. Whichever it was didn’t really matter to Will, he was just happy to be able to buy his own cheese melt.

“A piece of art you hold nothing but contempt for,” Hannibal clarified, a piece of his English muffin held on the end of his fork.

“Myra by Marcus Harvey,” Will replied after some feigned deliberation, he knew what he was going to say the moment Hannibal had asked the question.

“Ah,” Hannibal said, a smile quirked upon his lips, “a truly contemptible painting,” he added.

“It’s just sensation, pointless sensation,” Will said and did his best not to sneer. He wiped his hands on his jeans under the table, though he was sure that Hannibal noticed.

“But didn’t Marcel Duchamp say that art was anything whose only purpose was to be art,” Hannibal cut in, bringing up Art History 101, obviously playing devil’s advocate.

“Art’s whatever you say it is, and yes that painting is art, but it’s bad art,” Will said, regurgitating words he’d used in essays back in college.

“Bad how?” Hannibal asked, leaning slightly forward.

“Not necessarily in quality, though the quality doesn’t matter,” Will said, wishing he had something to do with his hands, he didn’t want to show his frustration through his wild gesticulation. He gripped his knees under the table. “It’s the context, it’s in bad taste.”

“A lot of art is in bad taste,” Hannibal returned, “Marcel Duchamp for instance,” he added as though he was showing Will a straight flush.

“A urinal is very different from a portrait of a serial killer done in children’s handprints,” Will said flippantly, his hands appeared over the table, flicking out derisively.

“How?” Hannibal asked. Will knew he was enjoying it, knew that he’d wound him up and was just watching him go.

“Because the parents of those dead children are still alive, their families are still alive and there are still bodies that haven’t been found,” Will explained, the sneer fully spread across his mouth now, he couldn’t hold it back anymore. “It’s sensationalism designed to hurt people, it’s callous.”

“So are the Chapman brothers,” Hannibal said. “They were also a part of that same exhibition,” he added, as though Will didn’t know, as though Hannibal thought Will didn’t know.

“No, they’re not callous, they’re pure sensationalism,” Will returned, he took a bite out of his melt half because he didn’t want it to go cold and half because he knew it’d piss Hannibal off, Hannibal was starting to piss him off. “Nazis and kids with dicks for noses are very different from Myra fucking Hindley,” he added with venom and took a sip of his coffee just for something to do.

“Jewish people are everywhere,” Hannibal said, looking around the room for effect, “we are in New York.”

“Sure, but the Chapman’s Nazis weren’t made out of multiple stars of David or something, they weren’t making some kind of faux high minded juxtaposition, they just made a bunch of Nazis fuck each other with smiles on their faces,” Will was pretty sure that people were staring at him, that reproachful looks were being sent his way, but he didn’t care because this was important. Somehow this was so important because he needed Hannibal to know what was important to him. “It’s camp, like John Waters, where Marcus Harvey is like Eli Roth, Myra’s like Hostel,” he went on, grasping for cultural comparisons, though he wasn’t sure that Hannibal would know either of the people he’d mentioned.

“You hate it because it’s a failure,” Hannibal said, like he knew what Will was thinking.

“It was a failure at conception,” Will said flippantly, lip curling as he spoke.

“I would agree, it is rather shallow,” Hannibal muttered and sipped delicately at his tea.

“What?” Will barked, blinking hard at the doctor.

“Harvey certainly could have pushed it further,” Hannibal said as he took up his cutlery again, Will had forgotten the food between them.

“Your problem with Myra is that it didn’t go far enough?” Will said, brows raised above the rim of his glasses and they disappeared into his fringe.

“Hmm, it would have at least garnered my respect for its boldness if nothing else,” Hannibal said, as though they were discussing something of no more importance than the crumbs on their plates.

“I suppose that’s something,” Will said, and found himself smiling as stared at Hannibal. “Is there something you hate?”

“Jeff Koons,” Hannibal said, lips quirking at the corners as his eyes alighted with mischief.

“Of course,” Will laughed as Hannibal smiled back at him. A new understanding had come between them, to Hannibal efforts were commendable even if the means or the ends weren’t, but to Will the affects were more important. They’d learnt more about each other. And maybe they were flirting again, Will didn’t want to comment on that though, not even in his head.

* * *

Inspiration came fast, like lightning shooting straight through him and sparking out onto the canvas. Blood splatter. Arterial spray. Blunt force trauma. Disconnection. Disassociation. Complete removal from that blood and pain.

The form the work was taking was raw yet detached, like much of Will’s work. And yet it was the most personal work he’d created throughout his entire career. Coating the personal, the intimate with the something that forced people to step back, forced them to remove themselves from the art.

Will always thought that the best art, his favourite art was the kind that transported you. Sucked you in and spirited you away. You stood before it and all the barriers between you and it disappeared. Everything disappeared until there was nothing besides you and it in the whole universe. Then it spoke to you. It said something to you that touched the deepest part of you, maybe it’s your soul but Will wasn’t especially interested in that kind of philosophy. It said something that you didn’t realise you knew all along. It opened a door inside you. You stepped through it. And were back in front of a painting again.

He wasn’t sure if that had ever happened to someone with his work. Will was pretty certain that those experiences only happened in galleries, the sterile white walls and crisp pristine air were an integral part of stimulating the mind. There was no way that it could happen in a restaurant or a café, there were too many distractions in those sorts of places.

This though, Will thought, could be something like that. There was no way that this was going to end up in some sort of restaurant or café. Hannibal wanted this for himself. Will entertained the thought that one of the doctor’s patients would see something in the piece, sat waiting in the hallway staring up at it and feeling a sense of companionship in a lonely waiting room, they wouldn’t be alone as long as his work was there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really do hate that Marcus Harvey painting, I went on an entire rant about it in my dissertation at university but I had to cut it out, so here you go, lol. I'm pretty lukewarm on Jeff Koons though, I just feel like Hannibal wouldn't like him. 
> 
> Anyways, thank you guys so much for the kudos and comments! Catch me on tumblr @ theweakestthing and twitter @ th_weakestthing  
> See you on the next chapter! xx


	9. Chapter Eight

It was done.

It was dark blown out colours over different dark blown out colours. When you took it down its barest parts, there wasn’t much to it, but there was so much depth between the painting, photograph paper and the canvas.

Will felt satiated. He felt like he’d been running to the finish line, sweat sliding down his back and matting the hair at his fringe and the nape of his neck. His chest rose and fell in quick succession as he stared at the canvas. Will couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so satisfied with a piece, he almost wanted to keep it himself.

He’d put a lot of effort into this piece. He’d read a whole load of books he never would have read otherwise, he’d gone out onto the streets searching for inspiration, he’d reached into his past and pulled out pieces of himself to display on the canvas for people who would never know what it meant to him.

For some reason, a reason that probably had more to do with his own preference for minimal contact, Will had never spoken to Hannibal over the phone. He stared down at his phone. Hannibal’s number shone on the screen, for a second Will wondered whether he’d be bothering the doctor but quickly dismissed the thought, it didn’t matter. Will had to tell him now.

He pressed the call button and held the phone to his ear. The ringing went on for a while and Will had just about resigned himself to talking to Hannibal’s voicemail when someone picked up on the other end.

“Good evening Will,” Hannibal’s silky tones came through the speakers and Will suddenly had another reason not to speak to the doctor on the phone.

“It’s finished,” Will stated, unable to get anything else out of his mouth. Not that he was particularly known for polite greetings or general conversational manners.

“I see,” Hannibal replied, clipped. Will supposed that his lack of manners were something that the doctor might take some kind of offence to, but he didn’t care, this couldn’t wait. There was some shuffling around as Hannibal moved on the other end of the call. “Luckily I have some free time before dinner tomorrow,” he said after perhaps too long a time, probably punishing Will for waking him up and not apologising for it, it didn’t bother Will though he was too keyed up.

“Sure, what time?” Will asked, almost eagerly.

“Seven o’clock, I’ll send you my address,” Hannibal said, “goodnight Will,” he added and hung up the phone.

Will stood in front of the canvas, barely noticing how Hannibal hadn’t waited for Will’s replying sign off. The work was done. The canvas stood still before him, a testament to his efforts.

He was too awake to fall asleep. Instead he lied on top of his mattress and stared up at the ceiling, smiling to himself. His grandfather came to mind, smiling at him from behind the camera, he wondered if he’d be proud. Will closed his eyes hard and tried not to let the emotion wash over him. Though it did all the same, Will was powerless to stop it. It crashed over him like cloying waves, pulling him down in the undertow.

* * *

Will had never been Hannibal’s house, he hadn’t even known where the other man lived, he hadn’t even asked about it. He probably could have found out. Hannibal had mentioned once that he worked out of his own home and Will probably could have found the address online.

He’d taken a cab. Will never took cabs when he could help it. Taking a cab in New York was one hell of a headache, especially at this time of day, but there was no way Will was going to take a painting on the subway.

The house was almost exactly what Will had expected. Ornate, classic, yet refined, restrained. There was nothing but deep dark colours on the walls. The book shelves heaved with books in various languages, mostly to do with the medical profession. The hardwood flooring was dark, chocolate brown. Will had been surprised when Hannibal hadn’t urged him to take off his shoes. Another thing that surprise him was how the home didn’t make him uncomfortable like he’d expected, instead he found the place quite comforting.

Hannibal looked over the canvas, face carefully unreadable, he wore a calculated visage that Will wasn’t prepared to even try to penetrate. For a moment, Will felt the urge to grind his teeth but smothered it at once. Again, this was another battle of wills.

“I have someone I’d like you to meet,” Hannibal said finally, completely baffling Will.

Will tried not to let his displeasure show, just from the slight twitch of Hannibal’s lips he knew he hadn’t succeeded. 

“A friend of mine is a curator for a gallery in Brooklyn,” Hannibal said, as though he were a magician doing a turn, revealing a dove to mild but enthusiastic applause.

“Oh,” Will murmured numbly. He didn’t know how to feel about this turn in their relationship.

Of course he wanted to further his career, pull himself out of the gutter. There was that little part of him, that part of every working class person, that wondered whether he really deserved such a thing over countless other struggling artists out there. Did he deserve this more than anyone else? Surely there were other people who were more talented or were struggling harder than him. He knew Hannibal wouldn’t have that though. Hannibal had picked him out personally, cream of the crop, his own personal side project.

He almost felt like a hobby for a rich man. His stomach churned.

“Will, your talent is being stifled by your situation and status,” Hannibal said, obviously he’d seen something in Will’s face, the veneer had cracked and Hannibal had stared straight through the gap, “your work deserves to be seen in the context of art instead of food and comfort.”

“Yeah,” Will murmured, nails rubbing against his stubble, scratching at his chin.

“Do not clip your wings when I am holding the keys to the cage,” Hannibal warned. He made no move to close the distance between them, no effort to change the air between them. Just a few placating words.

“That sure is a romantic image Doctor Lecter,” Will said, condescending, eyes tight as he stared back at Hannibal. “You’re the one setting me free?” He laughed, the sound was dry and cracked.

“I’m simply giving you an option Will,” Hannibal said, his voice was steady and even, “it’s up to you whether or not you leave the cage,” he added.

“Your attempt to convince me that I have agency in this relationship is quaint,” Will said with his hands deep in his pockets as he stared back at Hannibal, feeling betrayed more by himself than the man before him.

“I will show this piece to my friend, that’s something you can do nothing about, but how you handle the situation is up to you,” Hannibal said, his focus completely on Will. “I would not deny you your agency Will, you are someone that I consider a friend and I cherish your company,” he went on, body language open though there was something about the way he moved his mouth that stopped Will from wholly believing him. It looked like Hannibal was holding back.

“I think I’m nothing more than charity to you, your very own outreach project,” Will returned, “nothing more than your atonement for your rich man’s guilt.” 

“Your suspicion of others has protected you, but I’m sure it has also held you back,” Hannibal said, as though he knew anything about Will, as though he had a clue about the things he had been through.

“Sorry if my unwillingness to let people walk all over me is holding me back from letting you do whatever you want Doctor,” Will said, condescending again, as he tilted his head to the side again like a disgruntled dog.

“Your stubbornness is delightful,” Hannibal said, though there was no emotional inflection to his words. 

“Are you being sarcastic?” Will asked, smiling bitterly.

“Absolutely not,” Hannibal replied, though the corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly before he continued, “though your unwillingness to believe that I am being truthful is mildly frustrating,” he went on as his eyes took on a dark hue, maybe the light had changed, maybe he had moved his head ever so slightly.

“Your unwillingness to see this from my perspective is also mildly frustrating,” Will returned. He knew he was being petulant, but he didn’t care, he needed to know where he stood and he wasn’t going to take Hannibal’s subtle suggestions toward what they might mean to each other on faith alone.

“I can see where you are coming from Will, but if I simply wanted to discover you then I would not have shared so much of myself with you,” Hannibal replied, jaw tight as he stared down at Will.

“From where I’m standing you haven’t shared much of anything,” Will said, staying perfectly still where he was.

“I do not talk about my family history to many people, and I do not meet once a week with almost anyone I am not paid to, I see you as my friend more than I see you as an artist under my employ,” Hannibal said, tight lipped as he spoke, there was a furious edge to his words and Will delighted in eliciting a real emotion inside the doctor. “Is that enough of a confession or do you require me to bare my soul before you to prove that our relationship is more than whatever fiction you’ve created?” He asked with one brow arched questioningly.

“If that’s true, then tell me something,” Will said, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and stood open toward the other.

“Anything,” Hannibal said, the word was raw and broken across his accent.

“Are you gay?” Will asked plainly.

“That’s a very tame question Will,” Hannibal said, as though he was disappointed with Will’s pedestrianism. “I don’t particularly enjoy labelling myself but I suppose you would consider me bisexual,” he explained as though this was nothing and considering who Hannibal was it might as well not have been.

“That’s not all,” Will said, he ran his tongue along his teeth before he spoke again, “are you attracted to me?”

“I find you thoroughly attractive Will, I thought that much was obvious,” Hannibal replied, sounding disappointed again.

“If you want to pursue anything with me then you’re going to have to realise that I like to have a certain amount of control over my life,” Will said, staring straight into Hannibal’s eyes, it was uncomfortable but he wanted to make a point without having to say everything that was rolling around in his head.

“And you are going to have to realise Will, that there are times when relinquishing that control is more freeing,” Hannibal returned, like a tennis rally, and met Will’s unwavering gaze.

“Are you suggesting that we make a compromise?” Will asked, bitter smile on his mouth as he gave a dry laugh.

“Absolutely,” Hannibal said, and stepped forward, “we meet in the middle.”

“Fine,” Will said, taking his own step forward.

“Excellent,” Hannibal said, smiling down at Will, “dinner?”

* * *

If looks could kill then the couple across from them would have dropped dead into their outrageously expensive gourmet meals from the way Hannibal was glaring daggers at them.

Will didn’t exactly know how expensive the food was, mostly because Hannibal hadn’t allowed him to so much as peak at the menu, but everything about the establishment read as far more expensive than any place Will had ever been in. It set Will’s teeth on edge, but he wouldn’t leave. That wide streak of defiance inside him was something he knew Hannibal enjoyed about him. It was born from an early understanding that those with privilege would always look down on those without, Will had, for the most part, been without privilege. At least not much that he could use as leverage. Too poor and broken to be seen as much of a man, he often found himself left by the wayside, ignored or looked down upon.

The looks he was getting were nothing new and easy to deal with. They were very reminiscent of the looks he’d gotten at art school, coasting by on his scholarship, jittering around the studio on a caffeine high in thrift store clothes. This was far more bearable compared to the scathing comments that coasted by Will’s ears. Stares were hard to hear.

“You remind me of Michelangelo,” Will let his thoughts spill out of his mouth. If Hannibal was allowed to rile Will up, then Will figured that he could do the same.

“Hmm?” Hannibal hummed, mouth quirked in humorous intrigue. “How so?”

“You’re gay and petty,” Will replied mildly, pretending to contemplate his wine before taking a measured sip.

Hannibal released a hearty chuckle. Will couldn’t imagine him really laughing, not the kind of laughter that left you breathless or with tears streaking down your face.

It was his teeth that gave him away, besides his accent, Hannibal’s teeth were small and sharp. There was something eastern bloc about them. Something that made Will think of long winters and shivering children, skinny dogs baring their teeth at the side of the road. It was hard for him to imagine Hannibal in the dire situations he’d barely read about through the histories of artists he’d studied at university. Ravaged with starvation and eating things it was better not to think about.

“From what I understand, he was quite petty,” Will said by way of explanation without really explaining.

“Indeed,” Hannibal returned, eyeing Will with that predatory mischief that Will was beginning to get used to. “What about me makes you think that I’m petty?” He asked, it was the question he’d been asking before, but now he was asking it out in the open.

“I’m getting the feeling that, if we leave before the couple over there, then you’re going to ask me to stand look-out as you slash their tires,” Will said, he wasn’t lying but more scaling back from the kneecap breaking he’d been imagining.

“I would never stoop so low,” Hannibal returned without so much as looking up from his food.

“Really?” Will asked, one brow raised quizzically as he stared across the table and their food at Hannibal.

“My pettiness is hardly that petty,” Hannibal said, eyes flicking up to Will’s, unconvincing.

“Oh I’m sure you elevate being petty to an art form,” Will returned dryly, smiling sharply as he bit into his food. There was the slightest twitch at the corners of Hannibal’s lips as he stared back at Will before continuing with his meal.

Will was slow to admit that the way Hannibal was so entertained by him, eyes alight with intrigue and mischief, sparked embers to life in his gut. He wasn’t the chaste celibate that his college roommate had sired him. Will just wasn’t interested in most people. He was beginning to get interested in Hannibal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!! We might be meeting some 'friends' next chapter :3  
> Thanks for reading, for all the kudos and comments, it really means a lot to me. xx


	10. Chapter Nine.

Hannibal did Will the courtesy of asking when he was free instead of simply insisting a time and a place, which was one of the new ways the doctor was showing him that he was trying. A compromise was happening. The actual question didn’t really matter much since Will was kind of always free.

They met just outside the subway station, though he strongly doubted Hannibal had actually ridden a train. He doubted that Hannibal had ever ridden a train that didn’t have a first class carriage and definitely not in America. The thought of seeing him on the subway among the cold metal and graffiti, was comical, a sort of artistic juxtaposition.

He found Hannibal in a moment as their eyes met across the crowd, which wasn’t hard considering the man’s extravagant dress and the way he carried himself, as though he had more of a right to be there and take up space than anyone else, Will felt as though he was strangely under a spotlight. The doctor didn’t move. Will suppressed a smile as he approached the man, hands deep in his coat pockets and shoulders held up to his ears, it was quickly approaching the end of the year.

“You look as wind-chaffed and waifish as ever Will,” Hannibal said, by way of a greeting, smiling as though he were thoroughly charmed by Will’s appearance.

“I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or not,” Will said, swiftly pushing his glasses up his nose with the back of his hand before jamming it back into his pocket. His coat definitely wasn’t thick enough for the weather.

“It is most certainly a compliment,” Hannibal assured him, lips still curved like the cat that got the cream. “Do you know where we’re going?” He asked, and Will knew that this was one of his games considering the way he’d tipped his head slightly down toward Will, testing him. Will wasn’t sure whether he wanted to succeed or fail.

“I don’t know every gallery in the city, so no,” Will said, slightly ashamed and slightly thrilled to show Hannibal that he was in some way less cultured, since he knew it would stick in the other man’s craw.

“Certainly not a fan of networking,” Hannibal replied wryly, “this way,” he announced and began down the street, walking in quick long strides, and since he was taller than Will the other would struggle to keep up.

“I’m hardly a fan of days out either,” Will muttered, walking briskly, but not fast enough for the effort to show in his voice, “our weekly meetings are the most I’ve been out since college,” he added, flexing his hands in his pockets.

“Which is not at all surprising,” Hannibal returned, he threw Will as sharp smile over his shoulder. Will tried not to roll his eyes.

Hannibal weaved through the street as though he was made for it, as though these streets belonged to him, his kingdom and everyone around them his loyal subjects. Will considered that the image had entered his mind simply because of the regal way that Hannibal held himself. It might have also had something to do with how obviously wealthy he was. The brash entitlement in every step, it made Will sneer despite how he also found that level of confidence alluring.

They crossed the street, and as they were walking, Will’s eyes fell upon the building opposite them. Everything about it screamed ‘disused factory’ and that reminded Will of Andy Warhol, which turned his sneer into a full grimace. He’d never been much of a fan of Andy Warhol.

It wasn’t the whole building, of course it wasn’t, there wasn’t enough space in New York for that. The gallery was charmingly named Atticus:Art, though Will didn’t find it charming at all, it took up a decent space and proclaimed to the showcase work of up and comers.

Will supposed that was how Hannibal viewed him. An up and comer.

A man, tall and dark skinned, stood authoritatively in the gallery’s first room. It was almost instantly obvious that he worked in the establishment. He frowned as he stared hard at a sculpture in the middle of the room, appraising it as though it had somehow disappointed him, like a son stood in front of a broken vase.

As they got closer, and the man turned toward them, his face softened and Will noticed a gentle yet pockmarked quality to his warm welcome. Hannibal and the man embraced like old friends. A quickly clap of hands against the back, a chuckling greeting, a handshake that lasts just a little too long.

“Will, this is my friend, Jack Crawford,” Hannibal said, playing the conscientious host as he gestured toward the man beside him.

Will stared at the hand offered to him for a moment before he took it, making efforts to put his best foot forward, though he didn’t quite meet the man’s eyes. Jack had a firm grip, if he wasn’t someone’s father then Will figured he should be.

“It’s good to meet you Will, I’ve heard a lot about you,” Jack said, his voice was deep and commanding. He seemed like a real salt of the Earth kind of guy. The kind of guy that you wanted to have a couple beers with after work, the kind of guy that was easy to talk to, which probably meant that he was good at his job.

“Oh, well I’ve never heard anything about you,” Will said honestly, since he didn’t know what else he was supposed to say, blinking up at the man as he took a step back and slid his hands back into his pockets. Past Jack, Will could see the twitch of Hannibal’s mouth, as far as Will was concerned Hannibal was struggling to keep his sides from splitting.

“Well, I’m sure we can change that,” Jack said with a booming laughed, the sound filled the room. “How about I take you two out for lunch,” he added, eyes sliding between Will and Hannibal as he continued to smile. The tone made it obvious that this was more of a business proposition than an actual lunch.

“I’ve never turned down a free lunch,” Will said, and he could practically feel Hannibal’s smirk being beamed at him.

* * *

The lunch had been intense. Jack was evidently the kind of guy that knew what he wanted and wouldn’t rest until he got it. The moment they had ordered, Jack had sprung a proposition on him, Will hadn’t even had the time to take his jacket off. It was a sly declaration that the gallery had an exhibition set for April. Some poor planning, which Will doubted, had left a gap in their schedule.

Will hadn’t exactly acted coy, but he hadn’t caved instantly either, he never made big a decision without sleeping on it first. He’d told Jack that he would have to think about it. That was when Jack had offered him a residency. Three years. In hindsight, it was a fairly obvious move and Will should have seen it coming when Jack offered to take them to lunch. In the moment though, Will had only been concerned with not looking surprised because that was like blood in the water, he couldn’t seem too desperate for the opportunity lest he attract the sharks.

He was strangely thankful for Hannibal’s presence. It was grounding to have him there, and he could slide his eyes to the doctor and find a familiar face, a confidant in treacherous land. 

Eventually, Will had managed to quell Jack’s prodding and unending sly compliments with further promises that he’d think about it. When the meal was over and they were slipping on their jackets and coats, rising out of their seats, Jack said something that made Will feel a little hounded. He’d said ‘ _don’t think about it too long’_ and shook Will’s hand one last time, managing to slide a business card into his hand like he was slipping Will a tip. As though Will had the luxury to take his time.

Hannibal offered to drive Will home and Will easily accepted. His mind was spinning too much for him to navigate the subway, he’d probably get mugged without realising it, and that’d really be a strange twist to an already mind melting day. He slipped into Hannibal’s car and instantly sunk into the leather seats.

When Will was a fresh faced art student, he had dreamed about doing a residency at a modest gallery in the city, and he had stumbled into the possibility after all but giving up on that dream. And all of this was happening because of the whims of one rich man. Success really was all luck and money, Will thought, he’d always known that having friends in high places was the only sure fire way to get where you wanted to be.

“How do you know someone like that?” Will asked as they pulled into the road, hands awkwardly placed in his lap.

“It would be unprofessional to tell you,” Hannibal replied, his hands were immaculately placed at the ten and two position on the wheel.

“So he’s a patient,” Will said, head leaned back against the head rest, he watched the side of Hannibal’s face with heavy eyes.

“No,” Hannibal said with a quick little shake of his head.

“Someone who’s close to him is a patient,” Will said, changing tact, a different angle. Hannibal was making this too easy for him.

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Hannibal returned, a slightly smirk twitched at the corner of his lips.

“That’s as good as giving me the answer,” Will replied, smirking slightly as he shook his head. “Is that how it is, you treat the rich and powerful, scratch each other’s backs and the rest of us get the scraps, that’s if there are any left,” he went on, fingers curling into fists over his jeans.

“That is how it would seem,” Hannibal agreed mildly.

“It seems like that because that’s how it is,” Will returned with bite.

“Will you refuse Jack’s offer on principle then?” Hannibal asked, brow arched with amused intrigue as he flicked his eyes over to Will before swiftly looking back at the road.

“People like me don’t really ever get the opportunity to refuse people like you on principle,” Will said bitterly, nails scraping over the denim of his jeans.

“I agree,” Hannibal said, eyes sliding over to Will as they stopped at a red light, “having the ability to stand up for what you believe in requires that you first have the ability to stand, it’s a privilege not everyone is afforded,” he went on, a metaphorical way or repeating Will’s words back to him.

Will was still struggling with his place in Hannibal’s world. He didn’t want to be the diamond in the rough, but the way Hannibal made him feel, that intense focus made Will feel that he might actually deserve all the good will that Hannibal had brought into his life. Being who he was, Will found it hard to accept anything positive in his life.

“Do you think I should agree to all of it?” He asked, though he had already made up his mind.

“I don’t see a reason to refuse Jack,” Hannibal said, “but the decision is up to you Will, I am simply facilitating an opportunity for change in your career,” he went on, as though he had no stake in this.

“Of course, that’s all you’re doing,” Will returned, laughing dryly to himself as he continued to watch Hannibal’s profile, features cut sharp by the way the light came harsh through the driver’s side window. Considering the interest Hannibal had previously confessed to have in him, Will doubted it was all Hannibal was doing. The doctor had an invested bias in getting on Will’s good side.

Hannibal didn’t say anything, he simply smiled as they arrived at Will’s apartment building. Will muttered some thanks and climbed out of the car. He zipped his jacket up the moment he set foot on the sidewalk as the cold started to hit him.

The whirring sound of the window electronically winding down rooted Will to the spot. He bent almost in half and looked through the open window, stared at the doctor and waited for whatever it was he was about to say.

“Would you allow me to make you dinner this week?” Hannibal asked, as though Will was going to say no, just the fact that he was asking instead of telling him a time and date to turn up was a lot.

“All week?” Will asked in jest, brows raised as he continued to stare at Hannibal, growing colder all the while.

“No Will,” Hannibal said, truly smiling as he stared up at Will through the window, “just this coming Friday night, if you’re willing,” he went on, smile turning sharp at his own joke, Will struggled not to roll his eyes.

“Yeah, okay,” Will said, fingers twitching in the pockets of his thin jacket. He shifted on the sidewalk, shoulders again raised to his ears as the biting wind began to eat through his jacket.

“I’ll see you on Friday,” Hannibal said and Will nodded in reply.

He spun around on his heels, eager to get inside, the sound of the window sliding back up followed him as he took long strides toward his building.

* * *

Will flicked Jack Crawford’s business card between his fingers as he looked through the gallery’s website. He was half sprawled across the couch, take-out containers that would have horrified Hannibal littered the floor. It was hard to consider anything with the thought of Hannibal’s invitation banging around in his mind like a ricocheting bullet.

The last time he had been in Hannibal’s home, Will had mostly been angry and confused and feeling a whole load of other emotions that he didn’t usually feel, so he hadn’t exactly taken a whole lot in. His mind had been too full at the time to hold any more information. He did recall, however, how extravagant the home had been, and he wondered how he was supposed to fit into that environment.

Hannibal’s attraction to him confused Will on some level. Outwardly, they did not fit. Will knew that didn’t mean anything, that just because he didn’t wear suits and not one single one of his outfits came to more than eighty dollars, which was mostly because he’d spent a lot of money on decent shoes, didn’t mean they wouldn’t work. Their interests overlapped in some ways, but Hannibal had access to the more opulent parts of the world that Will was shut out of. It was hard to see them working together. Though they did work well together, there was chemistry, Will felt it and right now that was all he needed.

He also wondered how he would fit into the environment of the gallery. Even if he didn’t fit though, he just had to work there for three years, which was nothing compared to the five gruelling years of customer service work he’d done. So he figured that he might as well give it a try.

Will spent the rest of the night drafting up an email to send Jack, hoping that he was the kind of guy that checked his emails often enough to actually see Will’s. He should be since it was on the damn business card. For a second he thought about sending the draft to Hannibal, just to get his opinion, but thought better of it. This was something he had to do on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all thank you so much for reading and for the kudos and comments! All the support is really encouraging.  
> You can catch me on tumblr @ theweakestthing and twitter @ th_weakestthing


	11. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while again, hehe. Well you guys know that ~things~ have been going on and life gets in the way of things. Anyways, sorry for the wait and I'm hoping to update more frequently. Please enjoy!

The sun speared light through the blinds and directly into Will’s eyes. He hadn’t noticed the time. Slipping his fingers up under his glasses, Will rubbed at his eyes and turned away from the window. He was still sprawled out on the couch. Laptop open in his lap with a heavily edited email and about a billion other tabs open on his browser, he had spent the whole night researching the gallery and its business practices and industry standards, he needed to know exactly what he was stepping into before he accepted Jack’s offer. Evidently he had fallen asleep during this endeavour. At least his laptop was plugged in.

Will didn’t even glance at the words he’d written before he’d had his coffee.

He clambered off of the couch. Stretching in front of his makeshift bookcase, i.e. the stack of books on the floor, Will groaned as he reached for the ceiling. Falling asleep on the couch wasn’t very good for the body, but it wasn’t that much worse than his actual mattress either.

The kitchen was much brighter than Will was ready for and he winced as he reached for the blinds, how could winter be so bright? He rubbed at his eyes again as he turned toward the counter. Will put a pot of coffee on and sat at his rickety breakfast table, he rubbed his hands together thinking about being a part of a gallery, at least for a little while.

Admittedly the idea had grown on him. It would give him financial independence without having to pander to someone else’s brief. Sure he would still have to please those that hired him, but there he would be the ‘talent’ and not simply a labourer. He and his work would be worth more than something just to put on the wall. The thought made Will shiver, mouth twitching toward a smile, he could become something more.

He could become something more than just the foundation of a poor man struggling in an uneven world. There was a chance that he could be seen on an even playing field, he’d never been interested in holding himself above others, but this way he could control, at least a little, how others saw him.

It was a step forward and a fresh start.

Will felt refreshed by the thought and by the coffee now in his hands. Just the smell of it, fresh and rich though still cheap, made him feel like a new person.

He wasn’t entirely new of course. Will was still himself. Will would always be himself, still a product of a broken home, working class values, the struggle of blood, sweat and tears was still alive in his bones, bad upbringing and a good education, stubborn because that’s what people called you when you stood your ground. He was still all those things, but he was becoming something more, he had the opportunity to change the shape of his life and he wasn’t going to let it pass him by.

They said not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but Will had always considered that an awful statement, sleight of hand with words. That sort of saying was just another way of telling him to shut up and be grateful. Most gifts came from somewhere, were part of a transaction on one side or the other of the gift itself, Will would err on the side of caution.

There was a large and stark difference between gifts from people you already had a relationship with, from someone you were on even ground with, and gifts from those you hardly knew, had a working relationship with or were in a position of power over you. Sometimes people said things were gifts when there was an expectation of returns and only the giver truly reaped the benefits.

Parents give you gifts from the love shared between you or with a plea for good behaviour, a way to pay something forward. And Will supposed that it was similar with intimate partners. Gifts as acts of love and symbols of apology. Bosses and people who wanted something from you give gifts while expecting something in return. And when you take that sort of tainted gift, whether you mean it or not, the giver will take that action as an agreement to the rest of the implied transaction. Will didn’t want to think about the amount of people that had gotten burned from that kind of gift.

This particular gift Will knew the risks of, knew what was expected of him, had read over the contract attached to Jack’s email several times. He knew where he stood. It was an easy gift to accept, with all things considered, though he’d still done his due diligence, the singe of poisonous gifts past echoed in his memory.

Will looked over his replying email again, for the millionth time, and sent it. Finger swift and hard against the enter button. He breathed a sigh of relief, setting free the air he hadn’t been aware that he was holding in.

Since that was over, Will made himself breakfast. A simple omelette was a mild celebration in Will’s world.

With Hannibal, well, Will thought he knew where he stood. The doctor enjoyed a certain air of mystery. Despite how those vagaries frustrated Will, he was still thrilled by the puzzle box of the other man. And it was those things that made all the gifts Hannibal had bestowed upon him harder to accept.

He preferred to be on equal standing with his friends and more especially if he was expecting to be intimate with someone, which he supposed he was. And yet they couldn’t ever be on equal footing. Hannibal owned a home, he had his own practice, wore suits that probably cost more than Will’s rent and he’d paid Will’s rent for the past few months. Will, as of yet, had not been able to pay for their meals in the same way that Hannibal had, and he likely never would.

It was something he would either have to get over and swallow his discomfort about or step away from whatever it was that was blossoming between them.

Will scraped his chair across the kitchen floor as he placed his plated omelette on the breakfast table, and decided not to think on it much more. If it ended up bothering him so much that it got in the way of their relationship, then that would speak for itself.

He had more pressing things to think about. For instance, whatever Jack’s reply would be, though he knew that the job had been all but handed to him already. It wouldn’t do to ponder on that too much either.

There was something else that was looming at the end of the week.

Will tried not to think of that too. It crept up on him though, as he was drinking his coffee, like the light slipping through the open window. Was he supposed to bring something? In movies and on television, guests always brought a bottle of wine or some sort of dessert, Will had never been to a dinner party or a date where the other person cooked for him so pop culture was all he had to go on. Though Will doubted that anything he would bring would measure up to whatever Hannibal already had at home.

Then there was the question of attire. Will had nothing in the way of ‘formal’ clothing, he had nothing approaching it, a plain button down shirts and a pair of jeans were as ‘formal’ as he got. A suit had never so much as graced his wardrobe in all of his life. He knew that Hannibal preferred him the way he was, he’d all but said as much, but there was a part of Will that wanted to at least make some sort of effort.

And that lead to the next thought, the one that troubled him most, what was expected of him the coming Friday evening and what was the context? Was it a date, a dinner date? Was Will being cast in the role of the courted? Was Hannibal trying to court him? He supposed that the answers to these questions were obvious, but he didn’t want to be caught out being wrong, despite how brazenly the doctor had declared his desire for Will.

Will’s phone buzzed against the table top like a wasp rattling angrily in a glass, the sound tore him from his thoughts. Will captured it up from the table, he didn’t dare look at the preview, and his fingers were swift upon the screen as he opened his phone. An email greeted him. Will set the phone down, face down, and downed what was left of his cooling coffee. He stared at the crumbs on his plate for a second before he rose from the table and dumped it in the sink.

With his phone in his hand, Will left the room in a little more disarray than it had been in previously, and went back to his couch and his laptop. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose before he began reading. Will read Jack’s reply over several times, the first few hadn’t really allowed the reality to truly sink in, before he was able to reply. Even after he had replied, it was still a little hard to believe that he had a job, a job that he’d be starting the next day.

A strange sort of feeling came over him, a feeling that he could only think of as relief, the sort of quiet elation that came after a long and hard fought battle.

He sent Hannibal a text, the doctor called him almost the instant lunch came around.

* * *

Friday came long before Will was ready for it, though he doubted he would ever be ready for it.

Will was thoroughly out of sorts. All week he’d been trying to get settled in at his new job. Even the notion of a new job was fairly novel to him. He hadn’t had a new job in the last few years, once he was able to get by on his art alone Will had left the part-time world behind.

He had been swiftly introduced to the staff and the one other resident artist. Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller worked at the desks, Will supposed that they were the administrative arm of the gallery, he hadn’t gotten much of what their roles actually were because the two had started a rather heated debate about the ideological value of photo-realistic paintings and neither Will nor Jack had been able to get word in edgewise.

The other resident, Beverly Katz, was a junkyard sculptor. Will took to her almost instantly, and it seemed as though the same was true for her. Beverly was tactile and practical. Her studio space was messy, littered with loose sketches and photographs from the junkyard or dumpsters, paper spread across the wall in a way that probably made sense to Beverly but looked like nonsense to Will, and an array of books were strewn haphazardly across two tables.

She had introduced herself with such boisterous confidence that Will had almost flinched when her hand had shot out for him to take. He quickly grew envious of her cool confidence. He appreciated the way she didn’t shy away from denouncing artists she had a personal distaste for, namely Marina Abramovic, which Will found wonderfully refreshing compared to his overly fawning experience of art school.

It was refreshing in every sense of the word. A new start, a new job, a new place and new people. Will could practically feel the salt-saturated waves of sea water crashing down over him.

And just when he felt like he was settling in, Friday came.

Will had been so caught up in his work, finding his place in the gallery, that Friday had appeared like a flash flood destroying Will’s equilibrium. Sure he had known that Friday was coming all week but he hadn’t had the time to prepare himself for it.

That was why he felt so lost in the weeds, as though he’d just stepped off of the wrong side of a carousel. He rang the bell and stood back on Hannibal’s porch.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been to Hannibal’s house. That fact was easy enough to remember, but as he stood out on the stoop waiting for the door to open, he felt like it was the first time. He felt like he was waiting for his prom date. Hannibal was cast both in the role of the date and the father at the same time.

He’d brought a bottle of wine, using the money that Hannibal had given him. It felt clumsy, Will was already regretting it, he was sure that Hannibal would turn his nose up at the offered bottle. He didn’t know anything about wine. It had been a mistake, one made with the sticky desire not to turn up empty handed because he’d been taught that it was rude, his fingers had grasped the neck of something in haste and he didn’t even look at the label until he was out of the store. The weight of it in his hand was akin to the embarrassment swelling in his stomach.

The door swung open and Will decided he wasn’t ready, but he’d surely never be truly ready, and he doubted that Hannibal would be all that interested in a truly ‘ready’ Will anyway, whatever that meant.

“Good evening Will,” Hannibal said with a cordial smile and stepped back away from the door. Will made his way inside with a grumbled greeting, hands clammy against the bottle of wine. “Ah, a gift,” Hannibal said as he slipped the bottle out of Will’s grasp, he closed the door without looking at it, his eyes were instead intent on the label.

“You don’t have to drink it,” Will muttered, “I just picked it up and you know I don’t know anything about wine,” he added, resisting the urge to dig his fingers into his hair, a nervous tick that would surely be jumped on.

“A blind pick?” Hannibal asked, smirking slightly as he flicked his eyes to Will and then back down to the label.

“Yeah something like that,” Will murmured, he was acutely aware that they were still standing in the hallway, feeling under and over dressed at the same time. He didn’t know whether he should take his shoes off or not, what about his jacket? 

“How charming,” Hannibal said, finally appraising Will, eyes alight with a joke that Will wasn’t in on.

“It garbage isn’t it,” Will said, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jacket. 

“Nothing is unsalvageable,” Hannibal said, eyes back on the bottle for a second.

“It’s _that_ bad,” Will said, brows raised ‘til they were peaking over the rim of his glasses.

Hannibal only smiled back at him. It was definitely bad, at least the doctor was getting some enjoyment from watching him squirm.

Will followed Hannibal through the house. He had relinquished his jacket over to Hannibal and watched as the man hung it on a hat rack, the likes of which Will had only seen in noire movies that his college roommate had watched long into the night and high off of his face. Will hadn’t even realised it was there, he’d been too worked up and focused on the man before him to notice much of anything.

The house was the same as it had been the last time he was there. It was just as ornate and oppressively expensive. Will felt almost decadent just moving through the rooms, the ornate indulgence dripped from the walls, it was in the air around them and there was nothing Will could do besides breathe it in.

Hannibal pulled out a chair for him, much like he had at many of the restaurants they had met at. While he wasn’t at the head of the table, Will felt like the guest of honour despite being the only guest. He suspected that Hannibal would be sitting opposite him, though the place-settings spoke for themselves.

He sat dutifully waiting for whatever fancy the doctor was about to set out before him. Will would admit that he was thoroughly interested in Hannibal’s culinary abilities. If the man’s tastes were anything to go by, then Will knew that he was in for some sort of extravagance.

The doctor didn’t let him stew in anticipation for long, he was soon delicately placing steaming plates upon the table, he moved with the deft and elegance of someone who’d been trained. And, not for the first time, Will was reminded of magicians, sleight of hand.

“Steak?” Will said, his eyebrow quirked quizzically as he stared down at the plate before him.

“Were you expecting something else?” Hannibal asked, lips quirking at the corners as though he had expected Will’s surprise.

Will chuckled lightly, feeling caught out.

“I might have been expecting something more gourmet, like the places we often meet at,” Will admitted, fingers flexing self-consciously around the cutlery.

“But steak is a staple of the American home,” Hannibal returned with a sly smile as he made his way around the table and took his place opposite Will.

“So you made this for my benefit?” Will asked, though that much was obvious.

“The whole evening is for your benefit Will,” Hannibal corrected, his smiled turned sharp as he cut into his steak, “not only are we celebrating a new turn in your career, but our relationship is evolving too,” he went on, elaborating in a way that only he knew how.

“Oh, is that so?” Will said, a piece of steak and some darkly green leafy vegetables caught on his fork, he held it before his mouth waiting for the doctor to make his point.

“Our relationship is no longer transactional,” Hannibal stated, “without the monetary or commodity motivation, it will have to stand on its own new born feet,” he continued and took a bite of his food. His eyes closed in pleasure and Will followed suit.

Will had never had a steak like this, throughout his life he’d had plenty of steak but he was instantly certain that this was the best he had ever had. He couldn’t contain the small groan of pleasure that left his mouth as he chewed. When he looked up, it was to find Hannibal’s self-satisfied smile shining back at him. Will swallowed, hard.

“Like a fawn fresh from its mother,” Will said, trying to gain some purchase in the conversation.

He agreed that this was a new turn in their fledgling relationship. They were under no obligation to continue it and it would live only as long as they breathed life into it, as long as they put the effort in, and Will was more than willing.

“Very similar, a new life that requires nourishment and care,” Hannibal said, waxing poetic in that way that both frustrated and thrilled Will, “we have to encourage our fawn to grow into a mighty prideful stag.”

Will took up what was most certainly a glass of wine, though he would have likely been none the wiser if it wasn’t, and held it aloft over the table between them.

“Here’s to our stag, may he live a long and fruitful life,” Will said, half joking with the way his smile sat crooked across his face.

Hannibal laughed, a genuine full noise that Will grasped onto greedily for later recall, and raised his own drink.

“Here’s to our stag,” Hannibal returned and clinked their glasses together.

Their eyes stayed on each other as they drank and Will was almost dizzy with the thrill of it, the thrill of this new exciting thing living between them. His life had taken a startling new turn and Will was, for the first time in his life, quite happy about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the kudos and comments~ ;3  
> Catch me on tumblr @ theweakestthing and twitter @ th_weakestthing  
> See you on the next chapter! xx


	12. Chapter Eleven

“He was supposed to miss,” Beverly crowed, “or sort of miss, though it’s funnier if he was supposed to miss.”

“But he didn’t,” Will muttered, staring back at her over the book splayed in his lap. Beverly had passed it to him, a tome that was starting to make his legs ache, with an eagerness to discuss the inherent humour in all performance art. The book was open on a black and white photograph of a man standing against a wall as another man pointed a rifle at him.

“No he didn’t, and sure it’s horrifying but it’s fucking hilarious too,” she laughed, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees.

“Because he was supposed to miss,” Will said, smiling with just the corner of his mouth as he continued to stare at her. Beverly’s enthusiasm was infectious, Will could never keep a straight face for long when he was around her, it made the whole working environment easier to deal with.

“I think if Chris was grievously injured then it wouldn’t be funny, but it was just a flesh wound, the bullet went straight through him,” Beverly said, as though that explained why it was funny.

Will thought it was funny because of the whole situation. The context made it funny, not the simple fact that a man was shot, that wasn’t funny at least Will thought it wasn’t. Chris Burden had always put his body on the line for his art. He’d once crucified himself to a Volkswagen Beetle. He was definitely on the more extreme end of performance art. One day he asked his friend if he would shoot him, just nick him, wound him just enough to draw one drop of blood. In reality the bullet went straight through the flesh of Chris’ arm and they had to take him to the hospital. Chris had told the doctors and the police that it was an accident, apparently no one cared and Chris suspected that they thought his wife had shot him which was a strange thing to jump to. It was a shaggy story that Will had always found it slightly comical.

“If I was shot by a bullet I don’t think I’d find it funny,” Will replied flatly, still partially lost in his thoughts.

“Sure, but you’re not the sort of person that would ask someone to shoot at you,” Beverly said, she tilted her head slightly and her smile turned jaunty.

“You’re probably right,” Will said with a shrug. He lifted the book off of his lap and hefted it onto the table before him. Will’s studio table was littered with books, most of which Hannibal had pressed upon him, and loose notes and photocopies. The walls were plastered with photographs and photo-copies of pictures from books, post-it notes were scattered between them with scrawled half-formed thoughts.

“I hope so,” she shot back with a laugh.

Beverly’s work space was more cluttered than Will’s. She didn’t seem to do much of her actual work there, a closed-in room on the second floor of a building was certainly not the best place to do any kind of welding, apparently she did that in her parent’s backyard someplace outside the city. Beverly said she had an extremely lesbian car, which apparently was a cherry red flatbed truck. Will supposed it was more convenient for carrying around her sculptures. In place of her work were intricate sketches of what she might make, blueprints, scattered all over her desk. Beside the sketches were books open to the intricate anatomy of various insects. The walls were similar to Will’s, littered with photos, photo-copies and pages ripped out of magazines, Beverly seemed to be interested in New York’s most common pests: rats and cockroaches.

Will found it endearing, he found the whole gallery endearing really. Price and Zeller’s work places were covered in pictures fungus and bees. There were even a few frames filled with butterflies and moths on the walls behind them, both of them had all but chewed Will’s ear off talking about the various species over one lunch break.

Jack’s office was dark and moody but welcoming with unnaturally comfy chairs and a large dark desk. There was a dark blood red painting that hung behind the desk, over Jack’s back, it was something like a mixture between Rothko and Jackson Pollock. A chaotic womb, Will almost felt at home.

Things were going surprisingly well. And that in itself put Will on edge, whenever things were going well it meant that a downfall was coming, at least that was Will’s experience. It left a buzzing under his skin and stretched his nerves taut. Something was surely going to go wrong, Will was just waiting for it. He knew that this line of thinking wasn’t helpful and wasn’t true but that did nothing to quell the anxiety twisting inside him.

The dinner dates with Hannibal had continued, Will still hadn’t exactly gotten used to their extravagance, and he hadn’t managed to find a wine that Hannibal approved of either. In a way it was a new challenge, a new game. Instead of acclimating himself to the situation, he had simply resigned himself to forever feeling othered from it. In a way he revelled in how separate he was. It was another challenge, an effort not to let the opulence change him, and he could see how much Hannibal was enjoying it too.

There was also the added cat and mouse act that continued to play out between them. Their relationship was advancing in the same jittering motions that Will had somewhat forced them to take, for the most part it was because of the vast differences in their socialising and their social standing, Will doubted it would ever change considering their pre-occupation with it.

The tension was thick in the air. It was like smoke, thick and silky, twisting between them. Will was struggling not to let it choke him. He was strung out with intermittent thoughts of the doctor, it wasn’t effecting his work mostly because it was about desire and nostalgia, though he was especially unused to having someone take up so much space in his head.

It was affecting his sleep. Not just Hannibal, but the underline anxiety that he was somewhere he didn’t belong, he’d pulled himself out of his station and was finally enjoying his life, surely some sort of punishment was on the horizon.

He needed a distraction, he needed to stop thinking for a couple of hours at least, and he needed something that would calm him down. Hannibal would calm him down, but that would require Will explaining his unfounded anxieties. There was no way he was going to do that. Instead, he settled on the couch with his laptop and watched a movie he’d seen a million times over, he fell asleep with the sparse washed out light playing upon his face.

* * *

Will woke with a start, almost breathless, and the sweat was already cooling on his skin. He stared at the looping DVD menu that was playing on his laptop screen. He’d fallen asleep on the couch again. Whatever horror that had pulled him hurtling out of slumber was quickly lost in the soft dancing lights from his laptop screen.

Shifting, rubbing at the ache in his neck, he sat up on the couch and popped the disc out of his laptop. Setting it back in its case, Will pulled the laptop into his lap. He didn’t think about going back to sleep. The adrenaline was still thrumming through his system and Will was loath to lie in his bed waiting for sleep to take him, his mind would wander awfully and only a few things had been on his mind recently.

Instead of lying in bed tormented by thoughts of the lilting timber of Hannibal’s voice as he explained why the wine Will had brought this time wasn’t up to par, it was almost frightening how easily Will was sent out of kilter by Hannibal’s near condescending tone whenever Will tried to step out of his station, Will opened his emails. There wasn’t much there. Will was the kind of person that never cleared out his emails and left his junk unlooked at, the sheer numbers of unopened emails had horrified Price. He scrolled through mail from the gallery, there was a small expectation that he would appear at various openings and exhibitions across the city. Will hadn’t been to a single one yet. Thankfully Jack had swallowed his excuses of being swamped with working on the gallery’s upcoming exhibition in which he would debut. It wasn’t wholly untrue, Will was working almost every day to build his work for the exhibition, but he would be lying if he said that he had any desire to attend these events. He knew that it would be beneficial to him, the opportunity to network with those in the industry. But just the word networking made him sneer. The gallery also sent monthly newsletters, of which Will had only received one and despised it instantly. Most of all he hated the photograph that was slap in the centre of the page. Zeller had quietly snapped the offending picture of Will while he was preoccupied with his own photographs on the wall of his studio space. The small description of his work and Will himself wasn’t entirely awful, though that was mostly because it was taken from his own website just reworded. It only took him a couple of minutes to skim through the unopened messages. He thought about putting on another movie but didn’t get a chance to think much on it.

Will’s phone vibrated against the bare floorboards, it was a harsh rattling that rocked through his thoughts and thrummed through the soles of his feet. He reached with his foot, leg outstretched, and pawed the phone toward the couch. With a groan he bent to snatch it from the floor.

He was surprised to find a text from Hannibal. A text from exactly the man he’d been trying not to think about, while it was not quite irony Will considered it a kind of divine comedy. Will opened his phone and scanned the short text. It was kind of strange to imagine Hannibal, sat up in his bed with his cell phone in hand, texting Will, it was almost akin to imagining Oscar Wilde in such a situation.

_Thoughts of you, Will, have been keeping me from sleep._

Will blinked at the screen, it was something that he expected to see in a long and charming love letter written in ink from a couple hundred years ago, maybe even typed onto a desperate telegram. Seeing those words on his phone screen was a culture clash for sure.

It was surprising, despite the doctor’s repeated confession of attraction to and interest in him, to read almost exactly what he himself was feeling in Hannibal’s words. His continued inability to imagine that Hannibal was affected by his emotions was probably insulting and definitely uncharitable despite how unflappable the man seemed. Will was shocked by how much those few words affected him. All thoughts of anxiety had fled his mind and were replaced with a strong desire to see what those emotions looked like on the man’s body.

There was a large part of him that wanted to reply simply with ‘same’. Instead he told Hannibal that he would be there as soon as he could and clambered off the couch, he didn’t bother to check his reflection and barely remembered to pull on his shoes and jacket as he left the apartment.

* * *

The stoop was now more familiar and far less intimidating than it had once been. That night Will’s feet did not falter, neither did he hesitate, as he approached the door and rang the bell. His heart hadn’t stopped hammering since he’d scrambled to leave his apartment and he was almost breathless as he waited for the door to open.

“Hello Will,” Hannibal said as he opened the door, his voice was low and rougher than Will had ever heard it. The doctor stepped aside to make room for Will. He sounded just like he always did, which didn’t mean anything, the man always carried himself with a practiced ease.

“Hi,” Will replied and entered the house, Hannibal closed the door behind him, and Will stood in the hall and waited for Hannibal to turn toward him.

Hannibal was wearing a burgundy sweater and dark sweat pants. Will almost laughed at himself for expecting the doctor to be in either silk pyjamas or those clichéd striped ones. He was almost as caught off guard at the sight of the clothing as he was with the sight of Hannibal’s stricken face.

The man’s dark eyes were blown wide and the only way to describe whatever was dancing in them was hunger. Will had never, as far as he knew, had someone look at him with such deep desire. The palpable attraction between them surged through his veins and set his insides on fire.

“I suppose you’ve found yourself in a similarly compromised state as I have found myself lately,” Hannibal said in his usually vague and prose like way.

“Making assumption?” Will asked, smile quirking at the corner of his lips as he arched a brow at the doctor.

“I am simply coming to a conclusion based on your behaviour,” Hannibal said, clearly delighting in the challenge that Will continued to be, while continuing to drink him in with his eyes.

“Hmm,” Will hummed and stepped forward, into Hannibal’s personal space. The man smelled of something deeply rich and expensive. In the moment of not quite hesitation as Will took in Hannibal’s scent, the doctor swooped in, capturing Will’s jaw in one fluid motion to tip his head back and kiss him senseless. He almost felt his brain dribbling out of his ear as Hannibal swiped his velvety tongue across the seam of his lips.

He groaned as Hannibal pressed him up against the wall, hand cradling the back of Will’s head. Will was irritated that they hadn’t done this sooner. Maybe it wouldn’t have felt as good, maybe there really was something about delayed gratification, it didn’t matter to Will either way, he just wanted Hannibal to never stop.

The blunt scratch of Hannibal’s fingernails scraped against his scalp was enthralling and Will couldn’t help but gasp into Hannibal’s mouth. He could feel the doctor’s self satisfied smile against him. And Will supposed that this too would become a game between them, so he took the initiative and sunk his teeth into Hannibal’s bottom lip, and revelled in the deep rolling groan that escaped the doctor’s mouth.

Hannibal extracted himself from Will’s hold, leaving the younger man breathing heavily against the wall.

“Would you come with me?” He asked though he didn’t wait for Will’s reply and began to stalk down the hall.

He didn’t have to, Will followed like a man possessed, like a zombie chasing meat.


	13. Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ShhhhHHHh! Shhhh!! Don't look at the dates on this fic, ignore the dates. Shhh!!

Will stared at the four poster bed. He was barely able to see it over Hannibal’s shoulder, with the other man’s mouth against his neck, but it stood out above the hum of pleasure buzzing through his skin. It sat flush to the wall like a large beast locked in the room with them, chained up and soft, calling Will to slip into the sheets. He’d never seen anything like it before.

His own bed was nothing more than a mattress on the floor, though he had recently ordered a frame, he still found himself falling asleep on the couch. Will had never slept on something so large or something of the presumed quality of the bed before him.

Hannibal spread him across the mattress, head laid carefully upon the plump pillows, cradled by Hannibal’s hand. The doctor moved away to switch on the lamp. It hardly made a difference to the quality of light in the room, Will couldn’t see much more than he could before. That wasn’t the purpose though. The clear purpose was to change the quality of the darkness, less like shadows creeping around corners and more like the intimate and romantic flicker of a bedside lamp.

He shivered as Hannibal’s stubble rubbed across his cheek.

“Like this, you remind me of a Caravaggio painting,” Hannibal murmured, tone low and liquid as though he were pouring honey down Will’s ear.

“I hope we’re not thinking about the same painting,” Will returned, unable to let the statement, the compliment, sit, “otherwise I’ll start fearing that you’re about to skewer me,” he added, a joke and a flirtation warped and twisted together.

“I was referring to the olive oil like quality of your skin,” Hannibal said. He rubbed his thumb over Will’s cheek bone, fingertips sliding softly into the loose curls of Will’s hair.

“I think that has more to do with the lighting than my actual skin tone,” Will said, words catching in a way that he hadn’t meant them to, he was almost dizzy from the way Hannibal was touching him.

“What is lighting but a veneer over a painting?” Hannibal asked, voice lilting slightly as his breath swept over Will’s face.

“The light won’t protect me from damage or decay,” Will said, almost smirking as he tried to pull Hannibal’s metaphor apart, gouging at the poetic allusions.

“Or the things I want to do to you,” Hannibal said and his voice dipped low again, fingers against the short stubble on Will’s jaw as he pulled the younger man against him, mouth to Will’s ear.

Will hadn’t quite meant for the night to end up like this, he hadn’t come in the middle of the night for this exclusively and it was so awfully cliché that it had turned out this way, he almost wanted to twist away from the inherent desire between them. Instead he leaned into it.

Hannibal undressed him with the finesse and flourish of someone unveiling a statue. Will wasn’t marble though, and his skin pebbled in the fresh chilled air between them. Dark eyes, black in the low light, drank him in. He felt like he was on display.

Will surged forward, ignoring the embarrassment twisting in his gut, and grabbed Hannibal by the sweater. He was not as delicate as Hannibal had been. With the sweater bunched up in his fist, Will could feel the expense of the fabric, and he felt no small amount of pleasure in tugging it free from Hannibal’s body. He kissed up the man’s throat and flipped them over. And in a flurry of quickly discarded fabric, they were both finally naked.

Beneath him, hair mussed and lips parted, Hannibal looked much like a wild animal. Teeth and eyes shining. Will almost laughed to himself as the lyrics to ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’ came to mind, he bit the inside of his cheek and leaned down.

“What’s so funny Will?” Hannibal murmured, meeting Will half way, fingers curled around the back of the other man’s neck as he pressed their foreheads together.

“Nothing,” Will shook his head lightly and pressed himself flush against Hannibal. “I was thinking that you looked like you wanted to eat me,” he said, smirking into the swift kiss he pecked onto Hannibal’s lips.

“I would not deny the desire I feel to devour you Will,” Hannibal said, voice like velvet as he kissed his way down Will’s face, tongue flat against his neck.

Will hummed low in his throat, the sound rang in his chest, and he let Hannibal lay him down on his back. Hannibal swept him away. Like a wave, like an entire ocean, Hannibal crashed over him and Will went along with the undertow.

* * *

Will awoke to the harsh sound of the curtains being quickly drawn. Sunlight flooded the room and stung Will’s eyes. He groaned and rubbed at his eyes, digging his knuckles in.

“Good morning Will,” Hannibal announced, casually dressed in a thin navy sweater and dress pants that were slightly less fancy than usual.

“Mornin’,” Will returned, sitting up against the deep mahogany headboard, dressed in nothing but his underwear. He grabbed his glasses up from the bedside table.

Will was completely certain that he’d never slept this well in his entire life. He had never quite understood what people meant when they spoke of sleep the same way he’d heard other people speak about drugs, as though it were a lover you feel into with open arms, the same way he’d read artists speak of their muses. Now though, he understood it, at least a little.

“God, there must be something sacrilegious about sleeping this well,” Will muttered, as he clambered out the sheets and off of the bed. For him, sleep had always just been something that he had to do, like eating, washing and going to the toilet. If it ever felt like a luxury then Will couldn’t help but feel guilty about it.

“I feel that this is rather late in life for you to have discovered the joys of hedonism, especially for a college graduate,” Hannibal said, smirking slightly as he watched Will gather his clothes.

“I come from exactly the sort of working class background that George Bellows painted,” Will returned as he pulled on his blue jeans as though he were making a point. “Sleep wasn’t a luxury unless you did too much of it, most of the time it was the thing you did so you’d be able to go to work tomorrow.”

“I always imagined you in a more Edward Hopper sort of setting,” Hannibal said. Hopper leaned into a purer form of Americana, nothing as extreme as Norman Rockwell, but still more of a fantasy than anything Will had experienced.

“How romantic,” Will said, and buttoned up his shirt, the motion was as terse as his words.

“Would you stay for breakfast?” Hannibal asked. He moved past Will and made the bed with all the practiced ease of a hotel maid, he was done before Will was able to form an answer.

“What time is it?” Will asked, squinting at Hannibal’s form. Light spilled around him like some holy rendition of god descending from heaven.

“Eight o’clock,” Hannibal replied without even glancing at a clock or the watch Will knew he wore.

“Okay,” Will said with a nod, “I suppose you’ve already made it anyway, and presumed my answer,” he added, though he wondered if he really could smell the breakfast all the way from the kitchen.

Hannibal only smiled and left the room.

They ate in the kitchen. Warm streams of sunlight came through the tall windows. Will sat down and felt oddly at ease. Hannibal’s house had always had a strange sense of ease, Will figured it was the dark warm colours, they reminded him of Rothko. Hannibal had left these ornate looking plate covers over their respective breakfasts, when he pulled them up the steam rose with a steady flow. The scent assaulted his nose and made his mouth water.

He only wished that it wasn’t a week day. Then he could sit there and indulge in the food and the company. As it was, Will only had about an hour before he really had to leave, which was kind of irritating.

Will sipped at his coffee and sighed into the mug.

“How are things going at the gallery?” Hannibal asked, obviously taking great joy in delving into the most inane of conversation topics, it was so close to ‘ _how was your day, dear_ ’ and it made Will sneer into his coffee.

“Fine,” Will muttered in reply, “and by fine I mean I’m worrying that I don’t belong anywhere, that eventually everyone’s going to realise I don’t belong and then I’m going to be right back where I started, and honestly it’s starting to piss me off,” he went on, talking around his eggs and sausage just because he knew it would irritate Hannibal.

“I am not entirely convinced that anyone truly belongs anywhere,” Hannibal said, tearing his knife through his meat as he spoke, “belonging is more of a feeling, something that happens when you feel a certain level of contentment, which I feel will take quite some time for you to achieve considering your particular personality and background.”

“Right,” Will bit back, he dragged his hand over the stubble on his jaw.

“Will, do I seem like the sort of man that belongs where he is?” Hannibal asked, slipping a fork full of food into his mouth.

“I don’t know,” Will sighed. He didn’t really want to be talking about this. It was a nice morning, he’d had the best damn sleep of his entire life, they’d spent the night together in the sweetest release of tension and all Will could do was sink back into his anxieties and insecurities. “You act like you belong wherever you are,” he said with a shrug, “but that’s just how you are, you’re comfortable and unflappable no matter what.”

“I’m just like anyone else Will, I feel uncomfortable, anxious and insecure from time to time,” Hannibal said, his smile was wry as he stared across the table at Will.

“I find that hard to believe,” Will returned, smiling back at Hannibal.

“Last night I was possessed by thoughts of you, I felt as though I couldn’t wait a single moment longer to see you, and as I waited for your reply I grew anxious that you would find the advance unwanted and inconvenient given the time of night,” Hannibal said, eyes steady and challenging as they bore into Will’s.

Will swallowed.

It was hard to imagine, Hannibal pacing his longue, phone in hand as he waited for Will’s reply. Of course he knew that Hannibal was human. He’d held the evidence of it in his hands, watched the desire dance in the man’s eyes, and seen all manner of irritation flitter across his face. There was just something about his manner though that led Will to think differently. He figured it was the confidence that came with wealth and status, that and the practice of psychiatry, any decent psychiatrist had to learn the art of hiding their reactions and emotions from their clients. That didn’t mean that what Will had said wasn’t at least a little insulting.

“No, I get it, I just,” Will muttered, he dropped the cutlery down against the table and rubbed at his face. “It’s different, you’re comfortable and you can afford to force yourself into these spaces and find comfort in the fact that no one is going to make you leave,” he went on, his eyes skittered over the table, unable to meet Hannibal’s gaze. “I’ve never belonged anywhere, this is the longest I’ve stayed in one place, so I feel like I’m waiting for everyone to get sick of me or something.”

“But you know that’s simply the insecurities born from your past experiences talking,” Hannibal said mildly, and sipped delicately at his coffee.

“Oh, I’m well aware that it’s all bullshit,” Will replied and drained his coffee.

“Then I suggest you take these demons by the throat, strangle them and take your rightful place at the table with the rest of us,” Hannibal said, skewering more food with his fork, he met Will’s eyes and took a bite.

Will couldn’t help but laugh.

Hannibal was right. People like Will so rarely got these kinds of opportunities and it wouldn’t do to feel inadequate or like some sort of imposter, instead he should have been allowing himself this space. These feelings only served those that wanted to keep him in his place. And it was that thought that left Will with a renewed energy as he tore into what was left of his breakfast.

He was still worried that it would all fall apart, that too was coloured by his past experiences, but it was an entirely more realistic fear that he doubted he’d ever really be able to shake.

* * *

“Look who got some last night,” Beverly whistled as Will entered the studio.

He stood, hovering in the doorway for a moment, before his face settled into something that could only be described as an amused grimace.

“What gave it away?”

“Well, you’re smiling for one and you got me coffee,” she pointed out, eyeing the take-out cups in his hands.

“I’ll remember to be miserable and uncharitable next time,” Will said, smile turning sharp as he came over and set one of the coffees down in front of Beverly.

“You’re just in a good mood, and the quickest way to get into a good mood is to get laid,” she said, taking the cup up in her hands, feeling the warmth against her palms.

“I don’t know if that’s a universal truth,” Will said, smirking slightly.

“It is for me,” Beverly replied with a wink.

Will huffed a laugh, shaking his head as he made his way over to his side of the room. He dumped his messenger bag down onto the desk and sat down. Sliding his eyes over the work he’d completed in the near month he’d been at the gallery, for the most part he was pleased with his output, but mostly he was just trying not to think about how his first showing was only six weeks away.

“Well,” Beverly said, cutting through Will’s thoughts.

“Well what?” He asked, frowning at her.

“Tell me about the lucky person that got to jump your bones last ngiht,” she said, smiling sharp and wolfish, Will almost thought about telling her.

“I don’t know about that,” Will said, avoiding eye contact as he pulled his stuff out of his bag.

“Alright,” Beverly said, holding her hands up in submission. “I’m just glad you did it because I was a little worried that you might get a hernia from all the tension you’ve been holding in your body,” she added, still smiling, and took a sip of her coffee.

“Am I really that easy to read?” Will asked, dangerously close to whining, he didn’t want Price or Zeller to notice or even ask about it.

“No, it’s just that mild annoyance and/or discomfort is your base emotion or just what you put out into the world, but I’d like to think that I know you better than the average person on the street, I’d like to think I noticed because I’m your friend and you’ve shown me more emotion than you would the average person,” Beverly explained, crossing her legs as she watched Will.

“Right,” Will replied with a nod, “probably,” he added, almost smiling.

It had been a while since he’d had a friend, which sounded kind of pathetic, but most people didn’t find his company enjoyable and usually the feeling was mutual. And usually it didn’t bother Will. He had been on his own for a long time, and he could have continued being on his own forever, but he wouldn’t deny that the he enjoyed Beverly’s company. He enjoyed the company in the whole gallery, even when Jack was talking to him like an over-invested dad at a little league game, even when Price and Zeller were chewing his ear off about some sort of niche fact about an insect he’d never heard of, and he most especially enjoyed Beverly’s brazen ‘older sister’ attitude.

Maybe he did fit in, maybe he just wasn’t good at accepting it, and maybe he had to get over himself and focus on actual issues in his life. Will’s eyes flicked over to the calendar standing as an omen on his desk. The exhibition was coming up and Will would be expected to stand there, act like he belonged there and allow a whole host of eyes to crawl over him and his work. That didn’t sound completely impossible, Will though and sipped at his coffee. He’d just have to take things by the throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catch me on tumblr @ theweakestthing and twitter @ th_weakestthing  
> See you on the next chapter (I promise) xx


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